INSPIRATION

Inspiration is a software that would be a worthwhile investment for my classroom. I believe that it is very important for students to be able to organize their thoughts and to visually display ideas. Students that are able to demonstrate this skill demonstrate to the teacher that they understand concepts/ideas. Inspiration allows students to make organizers, outlines, etc. for every subject area. There are hundreds of templates to choose from. In addition, Inspiration is a great resource for teachers. It also allows teachers to organize information into a way that is precise and easy for the students to follow. Inspiration is very beneficial for the students and the teacher because it caters to the needs to visual learners, organizes information, and displays information in a way that is precise and easy for everyone to understand and to follow. Inspiration can be used in the following content areas in the following ways:

Science

• Teachers can produce concept maps for various units and/or concepts they want their class to learn.
• Students can graphically organize various scientific lessons (photosynthesis, forms of energy, skeletal system, etc.).
• Students can create Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast various scientific processes.

Math

• Students can create tree diagrams for concepts such as probability.
• Students can create process maps to display the steps in various math problems.

Social Studies

• Students can create Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast various events in history (i.e. Wars, etc.).
• Students can create concept maps to display all information relevant to the lesson they are learning.
• Students can create family trees.

Language Arts

• Students can create outlines before the actual writing process of papers.
• Students can create a "Character Analysis" of main characters in the literature they are reading.
• Students can create concept maps to outline main ideas of the literature they are reading.