Adapted from a presentation by: Patty AcheyCutts
Inspiration is a software that can be utilized by students and staff to create visual learning guides to enhance learning
and teaching in virtually every curricular area. Students can use this software to create their own “visual learning”
guides as an aid for organizing and retaining curriculum content. This will assist them to become independent, “lifelong”
learners. It can be utilized for brainstorming, organizing, prewriting, concept-mapping, planning, outlining, diagraming
and webbing. Staff can utilize “Inspiration” to create visual learning diagrams as a tool to use in their class.
Technology integration into the curriculum will be enhanced. Active student participation will increase as students will
be able to develop their own visual learning graphics. This aides comprehension as brain research and best educational practices
tell us that students need to find ways to remember components of information. Using the visual graphics in Inspiration,
students are able to construct meaningful visual learning diagrams.
Summary: Visual learning is one of the most effective means for teaching thinking skills. Visual learning help students
absorb knowledge and think meaningfully about a subject as they:
- Brainstorm to generate ideas and develop thoughts
- Web to show how different categories of information interrelate
- Diagram to graphically represent content and its components
- Plan to express large volumes of information in a concise format
- Think critically to visually analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas
- Map to illustrate relationships between ideas
- Organize to clarify thoughts for writing
- Outline to create a structured format for information
Activity
Create at least one graphic organizer (Resource): Inspiration Hands-On Workshop
Add links to the Internet, clip art, and a digital image to a graphic organizer (Optional)
Internet Resources for Inspiration
Inspiration Software Web Site
Inspiration Workshop Resources
Atomic Learning Tutorials
Using Inspiration in the Clasroom
Converting Inspiration Documents Into Web Pages
Inspiration and Kidspiration Resources
Graphic Organizer Index
Sample Inspiration Diagrams
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