Concept Map 3 - Open Source, Cloud, Virtualized, and App-Driven Shifts.

Concept maps are a graphical tool that is used to visualize meaningful relationships among concepts, processes, or events. Its used as a knowledge representation tool, meaning they basically represent the knowledge structure that we store in our minds about a certain topic. Both simple and complex concept maps consist of two things: concepts and relationships among them.

The concept map focuses on a single concept, process, or event of interest found in Open Source, Cloud, Virtualized, and App-Driven Shifts. Lines link the related concepts or processes with a word or phrase that describes the nature of the relationship between two components. Concept maps start with broad, general relationships and build on them to create very complex visual models of how many factors interact to produce a given outcome.

Your task in this assignment is to create a concept map, drawing upon the ideas in Open Source, Cloud, Virtualized, and App-Driven Shifts.

Here is a general procedure for making a concept map.

Develop a central question that will serve as the focus for your concept map. The question will help you focus on relationships between the concepts, processes, or events included as nodes in the concept map. Look at the learning objectives in your textbook. Turn one of the learning objectives into a question and then look through the textbook to find topics in the book that are related. Just write all of the topics that you find down (look for 20 to 25).

Your objective is to articulate the major factors that contribute to finding an answer to this central question. Select 5 to 8 of your selected concepts to be the major concepts. These major factors form the first tier of nodes.

Now expand on each of these major factors in a cluster by adding some of the remaining concepts in the form of the second tier (nodes) that contribute to the major factors or concepts you have already identified.

Continue to build your concept map with a third tier of nodes answering your central question. Your completed concept map should have a first layer that includes the major factors that directly affect concepts, processes, or events. Add at least two more layers, or tiers of nodes, in each of those clusters. You are free to include as many layers or tiers as needed.

Think of your concept map as a visual explanation. Imagine using your concept map to explain the influence of the identified major concepts to answer your central question. Your map should make the relationships clear. Use lines to indicate the relationship between nodes and include a word or short phrase to describe the relationship.

The Word document accompanying the concept map includes four components:

Include the central question you used as a starting point for the concept map.

Describe how and why you selected the concepts (nodes) included in your concept map.

Explain the overall logic in the organization of your concept map describing in more detail the relationship between concepts (nodes).

Provide a summary of how the concepts (nodes) that you included in the concept map answer the central question.