Inspiration is a useful website for organizing thoughts
using visuals. Inspiration is another resource recommended in the course book, Assistive Technology in the Classroom:
Enhancing the School Experiences of Students with Disabilities. Inspiration
allows students to organize their thoughts in a graphic organizer which turns
into an outline and guides the completion of the writing process. Inspiration
will take the student’s work and create a presentation if necessary for a class
assignment. After researching the software, I decided to download a free trial
to test the product. The software seems easy to use with the specific tasks
(outlining, mapping, presenting) directly at the top of the application. It was
easy to freely move around the software and try out different features and
templates from their library. Inspiration comes with many free templates that teachers can tweak
to fit their exact lesson plans.
Inspiration is designed for students from 6th
grade to adults, but they also offer kidspiration
for students in kindergarten to 5th grade. Kidspiration uses the
same idea of organizing thoughts with graphic organizers and mapping templates
but also includes a math section. The math section allows younger students to
count, compare numbers, and solve area and perimeter problems while using visuals.
I think all students would benefit from this software as
they work through the writing process. It will especially help students with
learning disabilities that cannot organize their thoughts on paper. It will
allow students to use visuals before creating a final story or paper. Students
with physical disabilities may benefit using computer software in the writing
process rather than a paper and pencil. I would love to use this software
during a writing assignment so my students could create a graphic organizer,
outline, and final piece all in one place. Unfortunately Inspiration does come
at a cost, but it is only $27.96 to easily download on a MAC or Windows
computer. If you wanted to try it out
for your class, visit the link in my blog and download the free 30 day trial today!
Enjoy the video below for a visual description of the Inspiration software.
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