Using Concept Maps to Understand Systems

 While most of the articles on this blog focus on the use of GIS maps, which I started doing in 1993 as I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection,  I've used a few articles to show my use of concept maps.  Visit this section and this section of the Tutor/Mentor blog and you'll find many more.

Today I found another example of concept maps being used to help understand complex systems.  I'll show a few screen shots below, then I encourage you to go to the site and do your own exploring.

Open this link and you'll be introduced to a Child Care Systems map that "explores the current reality of the childcare system in low to middle income communities in India, Bangladesh, Viet Nam, South Africa and Kenya.  

On most KUMU maps the explanation of each node is shown on a left hand sidebar.  That's true on this map, too.  In this case, there's an in-depth explanation of what the map is trying to show.  All of the nodes on the map are shown in the above graphic.

At the top of the map are labels, such as "deep structure", "family and community", "gender equity", #policies and resources, and "social and economic development".

At the lower left is a legend that shows what category of information each color represents. You can click on any of these and get a view that only shows nodes of that category. 

Click on "deep structure" and you'll get this view. 

What I really like about this map is that while information can be seen on the left, this map includes clarifying information directly on the map.  Click any node and a "pop up" text box appears. Even the "orange arrows" surrounding some nodes have text boxes.

Click on "gender equity" and you'll see this view.

Click on "policies and resources" and see this view.

Click on "social and economic development" and see this view.

In this article on the Tutor/Mentor blog I showed slides from a Global Futures Society Network Map.

This map shows "who" is involved and how they are connected to each other.  If used in combination with a map like the Child Care Systems map, it seems that there could be a robust, on-going conversation that might lead to fixing some of the problems addressed on the Child Care Systems map.

In this article, titled "Mapping Event Participation" I show my own efforts since the late 2000s to map participation in conferences that I hosted, with a goal of connecting those who attended with each other, and building an analysis of "who's there" and "who's missing".  

These are powerful tools, if used in on-going planning, network building and capacity building.  

In this article I wrote about mapping assets within universities and of creating an on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection, where students, faculty and alumni would do the work I've done for the past 30 years, and the work that I'm now showing about the use of concept maps.

If you've read this article, please share it with people in your network who have the wealth that could lead to funding a university-based Tutor/Mentor Connection, based on the ideas I've shared.  Share it with students who might want to do this work as independent study, or for information visualization courses, like the IVMOOC course offered at Indiana University.

Maybe someone in your network will be the 'tipping point' that make this a reality.

Thanks for reading. Please connect with me on one or more of the social media platforms that I show on this page.

If you're able please contribute to my December 19th 79th birthday campaign, or my Fund T/MI campaign.  

Cook County (IL) Digital Equity Map

I'm always looking for websites showing uses of maps to focus attention and resources on many locations where people need extra help.  Below is the Cook County Digital Equity Map.

You can find the map here.  Click here to find information about how the IMPACT Small Grants Program is providing funding and storytelling support to local nonprofits, media organizations and libraries throughout Cook County.   

Join in the on-line Chicago Hack Night presentation this coming Tuesday (Nov 4, 2025) at 7pm and learn more about this program and an IMPACT Small Grants Program.  If you can't make the live presentation all Chicago Hack Night events are recorded so you can watch them later.

City Bureau is partnering with the Cook County Board on this IMPACT Small Grants Program. 

As you look at the Cook County map, look at this visual essay that I created in 2015 to show ways to use maps to focus attention and resources on EVERY high poverty area of Chicago and its suburbs. 

In this presentation I show maps of Cook County Commissioner districts, along with other political districts, like Chicago Aldermanic Wards and Illinois State Legislative districts.

Below I show maps of Cook County Commission Districts 2 and 3, and shootings that took place in their districts. 

I did not see a feature on the Digital Equity map that sorts the information by district.  How can Commissioners be held accountable if voters can't see where people need help, and where help is going?

I'd love to see maps on websites of every elected official that mirror the thinking I share in this visual essay.  It shows a collaboration across districts, focusing on shared geography, and shared commitment to helping people who need extra help.

Maybe this is being done somewhere. If you know of such sites, please share the link.  If not, share my presentation with elected officials and encourage them to build a platform with this functionality.

Thanks for reading.  

I've been sharing this message for over 30 years, but far too few people have seen it and thus, too few are applying the ideas. You can help, just by sharing my posts.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter and other platforms. Find links on this page.

If you value what I'm sharing, please chip in to help me pay the bills. Visit this page. 

New example of using maps in planning

Below are two maps from an interactive tool created by Kindred Futures, that maps pathways to building collective Black wealth in the Southeast part of the USA.

 

These two maps are part of a set of maps that you can find at this page.  While the story features Atlanta, the interactive platform enables you to create map stories for any part of the states shown on the map.  If enough of these stories are created and shared, they can attract more interest, volunteers and investors to support the goals stated on the website.

If you browse through articles I've posted on this blog, and the Tutor/Mentor blog you'll see that I've encouraged people to create map-platforms that provide information that informs and can be used in planning.  

What's next?

My only hope is that the developers will take a further step and collect information about existing youth tutor, mentor and learning programs and plot that on maps, the way I've done for many years.  This article highlights 30 years of using maps. 

In this article you can see how I share maps created by others and show how they might be improved by adding some of the features that were put into our mapping  platforms between 2004 and 2008. 

In total, these articles are intended to stimulate thinking and innovation in how intermediaries collect data and share it on interactive platforms, with the goal of drawing resources directly to youth serving programs shown on the map, or to help leaders see where more programs need to be built.

If you're creating a platform like the ones I'm showing, post a link to your site in the comment section. Then connect with me on one of these social media channels. 

I found this 2014 interview today on Mastodon

Below is a post that I found on Mastodon.social today when I did a search for #youthdevelopment.

This is an interview of me (Dan Bassill) recorded by Phil Shapiro in 2014.  You can listen to it here. Note. This is a platform called "MakerTube" not "YouTube".  

I hope you'll take time to listen to it. Phil is a librarian from the Washington, DC area.  It shows how Phil and I met in an Internet discussion group in the early 2000s and have stayed connected through constantly changing Internet platforms in the years since then.  While the interview is from 2014, Phil shared it in August 2025.  Wow.

During the interview I pointed Phil to a series of article about my use of concept maps, that I wrote in late 2014 and 2015.  You can find the collection at this link. 

If you listen to the entire interview (about 32 minutes) you'll see that I end with the goal that alumni of the programs I led will some day take my place leading this effort.  That was 10 years ago. It's still my goal, only I'm now a lot older.

Since doing the interview in 2014 I've moved my library of concept maps to this page on my Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website.  And, you can find 93 articles that feature concept maps on the Tutor/Mentor blog. 

Thanks Phil for doing the interview in 2014 and sharing it on Mastodon.  Maybe a few more people will take a look.

This was not the first time Phil boosted my work.  Take a look at this 2009 article that Phil posted in PCWorld, titled "Crowdsourcing the MacArthur Awards". 

Thanks for reading.  You can find me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a few other places. (see links on this page).

If you value what I'm doing and can help,  please visit this page and make a contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. 

Explore the maps. Create your own stories.

I've been using maps since 1994 to show where Chicago area kids need extra help based on the level of poverty and inequality in the areas where they live. This blog was created in 2008 to show maps my organization was creating. Since 2011 the blog has shared maps created using our interactive map-based Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator. 

The Program Locator has only been available as an archive since around 2017, so the blog has been used to show data platforms hosted by others.  Below is a concept map showing some of the platforms found in this section of the Tutor/Mentor library.

On this concept map I've circled one node, titled "Education data".  Click on the small box at the bottom of the node and you see three links.  I opened the one titled "Education Opportunity Map".

This is the "Education Opportunity Project at Stanford University".  This page shows three projects. I chose the "Segregation Tracking Project" and opened the map shown below.

In the lower right is a legend. The green shading shows the level of White-Black Segregation between schools in each state, with the dark green being the most segregated.   The orange shading shows the percent of White Students in individual schools, with the darker Orange being the highest.

I zoomed in to the Chicago region, to the map-view shown below.  This map shows the level of segregation in individual schools.  Just click on any of the dots and a pop-up will show the name of the school and level of segregation.

I zoomed in as far as the site would allow.  The map below shows the South Side of Chicago.

The dark green background shows that this is a highly segregated area and the white dots showing individual schools, confirms that.

I've written about segregation several times in past years.  Open this link to find articles on this site, and open this link to find articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog. 

Now create your own map stories. 

Explore the data platforms shown on the concept map at the top of this article. Zoom into your own city, state and/or neighborhood.  Learn about needs and opportunities. 

Then brows my blog and use my articles as templates, to see how you might embed maps in articles and/or videos intended to draw more people to information about race, segregation and inequality, and to draw more people to organizations working with youth and families living in areas of persistent poverty.

Students in middle school, high school and college can learn to do this. At some point in the future every city should have at least one blog like this one, sharing datamaps and stories created by others, and drawing attention to places where people need extra help.

I've created many visual essays that show how maps and map-stories, created by many people, can have a huge impact on changing public policy and influencing the flow of needed resources into high poverty, highly segregated neighborhoods.  Here' one example. 

Find more like that in this collection. 

Thanks for reading. I hope you'll share this, and your own work.  Connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky and Mastodon (see links here). 

I depend on help from a small group of donors to fund the work I'm doing.  Please visit this page and add your own support. 

Learning, network building and innovation

Since March 2025 I've not added new links to the Tutor/Mentor library since the site was being upgraded. That work finished last week so I've added many links that I'd seen in the past few months. 

Below is a view of the VizDex website, which is a library of personal and independent blogs and newsletters dedicated to data visualization.   

I saw mention of this on one of my social media feeds and once I visited the site I asked if my MappingforJustice blog would qualify.  The answer was "yes" as you can see from the image I've posted.

I've now added that link to my own library.  For the past few years, as I've added new links, I notified viewers by putting that link on my "new additions" page.  Below you can see the "new links for 2025" page.

When you look at this list, note that under every listing is a "find in this section" statement, with a link to the section of the library where I added the link.

In this case, it points to a page where I've several dozen links to websites that demonstrate uses of concept maps and visualization. 

These are in alphabetical order so you need to scroll to the bottom of the list to find the VizDex site. As you do you'll find many more sites where you can learn ways to use concept maps and visualizations.

One of those you'll see is this Power Mapping article on a website named "The Commons: Social Change Library". 

This article is particularly relevant because it describes my own vision of using concept maps to "know the network, then nudge the network".  And it's part of a much larger library of social change information managed by The Commons. 

Below is a page from a visual essay where I describe how the links I point to are experts in specific topics and often host libraries of their own.  Thus, I don't need to have "everything" in my own library if I can point to others who have greater depth of specific topics than I have.

I've posted several articles on the Tutor/Mentor library showing how my library was intended to stimulate innovation and constant improvement within the youth/workforce development ecosystem. In this article I included this statement.

I started building a library of research and peer tutor/mentor program information in the 1970s, to stimulate the thinking and innovation of volunteers working with me to build the tutor/mentor program I was leading at the Montgomery Ward Corporation in Chicago. As I created my library, began sharing it with peers, leading other programs. I formalized this information collection/sharing in 1993 when I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Now I host an extensive web library of information, with links to more than 2000 other web sites, that anyone in Chicago, or the world, can dig into to find "carrots" that inspire their own innovation and constant improvement.

I was pleased that the VizDex leaders added this blog to their list. I wish more were doing the same and that we were working collectively toward motivating more people to use the libraries for on-going learning and problem solving.  Furthermore, I'd love to find people using the Power Mapping ideas who are building maps showing the ecosystem needed to change policy and make more, and better, long-term youth development, learning and career development resources available in every area with concentrations of persistent poverty.  

We need to be connected and working collectively to draw attention to the resources we are sharing.

Thanks for reading.  I hope you'll connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon and other platforms and share links to your own libraries and blogs.  

I also ask that you consider making a contribution to help me fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC so I can continue to keep the library on-line and freely available to the world.  Click here to learn more.