"Inspiration"
is an instructional tool to help students organize their thoughts onto an attractive
visual diagram or outline. It helps students understand key concepts, improves
retention of those concepts, and develops organizational skills.
Teachers
can use this software to create a brainstorm web together as a class or assign
a brainstorming activity for students to complete by themselves. A teacher may
want to pose the initial brainstorming idea or questions, or a teacher can give
students more freedom with it. Students can create a concept map that shows the
relationship among two or more ideas or create a cause and effect diagram. A
Venn Diagram template is also available to compare and contrast items. This
program could be used in any subject and has various templates for specific
subject areas as well as more general ãThinkingä templates that anyone can use.
I
would use this program in teaching my portfolio theme by having students create
a character web showing the relationships between the characters in The
Outsiders.
"Inspiration"
motivates students by providing a fun way to organize information. It allows students to plan their writing,
demonstrate cause
and effect relationships, and analyze the relationships between items. It also
has the capability of letting student see how their ideas can be organized into
an outline and provides an attractive product of which students can be proud.
"Inspiration" provides a detailed manual with a tutorial guide,
on-screen help, and a web-site that provides up to date information about the
product. A weakness of the program is that when you open "Inspiration,"
you see a blank screen. This can be daunting for a student who is using it for
the first time. Also, some of the menus are hard to find and are not clearly
marked. Students need quite a bit of instruction while they are beginning to use
the program. Though I enjoy using this software, I feel like the on-screen
directions could be more clear. The end product is always exciting to see, but I think that they could easily add better
on-screen directions for students to follow.
To order Inspiration, call
1-800-877-4292 or visit their web site at Inspiration.com
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