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eNews:
Professional Development Tips
Inspiration©
Inside and Outside of the Classroom
January 2003
By:
Ruta Puskorius, Tom Snyder Productions
On-Line Professional Development Manager |
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The use of electronic graphic organizers to represent concepts
and ideas visually can be a powerful tool for teaching and
learning. When students see information in a Web diagram or
concept map, their minds begin to see patterns and relationships
among ideas. Graphic organizers not only help students understand
what they are being taught, but also help teachers understand
what students are learning when students create them. They
can "see" their students’ thinking, thus helping
to assess, guide, and direct.
Using a computer for concept mapping, both students and
teachers can create and modify ideas quickly, efficiently,
and neatly. Inspiration, known as the premier tool to
develop ideas and organize thinking, is a software program
specifically designed for creating these powerful, visual
diagrams.
Both inside and outside of the classroom, Inspiration
supports improved achievement for all students, strengthening
critical thinking, comprehension, and writing across the
curriculum. This dynamic program can be used for brainstorming,
webbing, planning, concept mapping, and outlining.
Below are some great examples we've found of how teachers
and students are using Inspiration both inside and outside
of their classrooms to support teaching and learning.
As you look through these examples, think about how you
could use Inspiration to support your curriculum.
Inside the Classroom
Use Inspiration to conduct great class discussions,
and help with student content acquisition and concept
understanding!
In language arts, Inspiration is the perfect
tool to help with character analysis. In the following
Web diagram, students brainstormed qualities of one story
character, and then found supporting evidence within the
book:
Stuart
Little
For exploring new vocabulary, the following diagram
presents a definition, sentence, graphic, and several
synonyms to illustrate a word. If you click the photo
of the orangutans, you are also taken to a Web site
to learn more about this endangered animal:
Introducing
New Vocabulary
For conducting online research, the following Inspiration
diagram provides the links students are to use to find
information for their reports. By selecting Web sites
students visit ahead of time, they are guided as to
where to find the information they need:
50
States Research
For scientific concept exploration, view
the following lessons in which a comparison Web is created
in order to learn about marine animals and reptiles:
Ocean
Creatures
Frog
and Toad
The following concept map was created as a pre-writing
activity, helping one student organize her ideas before
beginning her composition:
Summer
Vacation
Outside the Classroom
Inspiration is an excellent tool to help you with
administrative tasks, curriculum planning activities,
the preparation of classroom materials, and communication
with parents!
The following diagram was constructed to help plan
reading comprehension lessons:
Reading
Informational Text
This map, created as the result of a brainstorming
session, can be used as a guide to determine how to
select vocabulary words for student study:
Guidelines
for Selecting Vocabulary Word
While it can be difficult to prepare for parent-teacher
conferences, Inspiration can help with the task at hand.
The following diagram lists student strengths and weaknesses,
next steps to be taken, and suggested action steps to
be recommended to the parent:
Parent
Teacher Conferences
In a newsletter to parents explaining the new curriculum,
the following Inspiration diagram was created:
All
Aboard Third Grade
This template, created to help students develop their
vocabularies, can be used by students either at the
computer or as a printed worksheet:
Vocabulary
Template
Additional Resources
For more information on using Inspiration and graphic
organizers both inside and outside of the classroom, visit
the following resources:
Do you want to learn more about how to use Inspiration
software to improve teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms?
Have us come to your school for a workshop!
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