With 34 years of teaching behind her, science teacher Maryanne Porter is well-versed at finding ways to engage students in learning. Putting her skills to the test, Porter, along with two colleagues at Academy Park High School in Sharon Hill, Pa., located just outside of Philadelphia, recently began a pilot program to team-teach a class of 20 at-risk, ninth-grade students, many with discipline issues. Nearly every day, Porter reaches for Inspiration®, the ultimate thinking and learning tool to comprehend, create, communicate and achieve more, from Inspiration® Software, Inc., designed for learners in grade 6 to adult.

In this unique classroom, known as “305,” after the room in which it’s located, Porter collaborates with a math teacher and a language arts/special education teacher to give the students the focused attention, instruction and encouragement they need for academic success. The students share the same curriculum as other ninth-graders in the district, and must meet the same state standards. For lessons across the curriculum that require “higher level thinking,” Porter and her colleagues employ the help of Inspiration, which Porter has come to rely on since she began using it six years ago in a regular science classroom.

“I love Inspiration—we use it constantly,” she said. “It’s very user-friendly, and it makes it much easier for my students to organize their ideas. They have a lot of fun learning with it—it’s definitely a perk for them.”

Porter recalled the first time she and her colleagues saw a demonstration of Inspiration, nine years ago, by the district technology coordinator. “Here we were, a group of veteran teachers, and we couldn’t stop playing with it,” she said. Today, every computer at Academy Park is loaded with Inspiration, and “students are really taking off and moving far ahead with it,” she said.

The students of 305 use Inspiration to build graphic organizers—including concept maps, webs, mind maps and idea maps—to brainstorm, plan, organize, think, outline and present their ideas. Porter appreciates the ease with which it allows students to move from one format to another, she said. “It’s sensible, and it’s the way things should work. I don’t know if my students understand that it’s a big deal, but it is.”

Students in Porter’s class created this Inspiration diagram to relate new information with real world examples to better understand the six simple machines.

With each assignment, Porter has her students add more visual elements to their work, drawing from Inspiration’s extensive online libraries of clip art and symbols, or by adding their own images. “Inspiration allows students to bring their own creativity to their work. They can very easily add images that are meaningful to them, and everyone’s is different, not cookie-cutter,” she said.

For some students, seeing a visual representation of a concept is the only way to learn it, said Porter. “A traditional written outline doesn’t work for everyone,” she said. “But if they can see it in a graphic organizer, they know whether they’ve connected something in the right place, and it makes sense.”

In line with district goals, Porter is teaching vocabulary that relates to the curriculum, in response to research that suggests it results in improved achievement. So every week, Porter chooses an article about a current event in science that is relevant to a lesson she’s teaching in class. Next, she asks her students to choose four vocabulary words they read in the article. She then creates a vocabulary list from the most frequently selected words, and using the Word Guide in Inspiration, her students look up the definitions. Next, the class converts the vocabulary list into an outline, which becomes the study guide. And with just a few keystrokes, Porter creates a quiz. “This exercise puts the vocabulary words in context for them and gets them thinking. We’ve had some interesting discussions about the alternate meanings, and they remember what the words mean,” she said. “Some of my students are getting perfect scores on the quizzes every week.”

When Porter taught the electromagnetic spectrum, she used Inspiration to look at wavelength and frequency. When her students learned about lab safety and physics, she used Inspiration again. And her co-teachers in 305 use it for math vocabulary and writing assignments. “I can’t think of a topic for which it wouldn’t work,” she said.

Porter used Inspiration during a lesson on the electromagnetic spectrum. Adding visual elements provided her students with meaningful connections, reinforcing their comprehension of the concepts of wavelength and frequency.

Porter makes use of Inspiration for topics that are complex, but perhaps most valuable for her students is the ability to create a clean and polished finished product, which gives them pride in their work, she explained. “With Inspiration, you don’t have to be the best student to build something that looks nice. Some of my students have difficulty using a pencil, or other challenges. Inspiration helps level the playing field for struggling learners.”

Today, by any account, the students of 305 and Academy Park High School are succeeding, as discipline issues in the ninth grade, school-wide, have dropped by 90 percent. “These students are learning, and they’ll be ready for the 10th grade,” said Porter. “This class has made a huge difference, and Inspiration has definitely been a part of that.”

A teacher describing the functions of the organelles that make up a cell—with terms such as ribosome, lysosome and endoplasmic reticulum—can sometimes be met with a room full of glazed stares. In Cheryl Teaters’ high school classroom, students can’t get enough of it, showing up during their lunch periods and staying after school to perfect their “cell analogy projects.”

Teaters, who teaches biology at Gateway High School in Monroeville, Pa., has her ninth- and tenth-grade students draw a biological analogy to another structure, such as a school, an automobile or a city. A student comparing a cell to a city might label its city hall as the nucleus, the road system as the cytoskeleton and the power station as the mitochondria. In the past, Teaters has employed “the old posterboard method,” but this year she brought the project to life with Inspiration®, the essential tool to visualize, think, organize and learn from Inspiration Software®, Inc., and saw a new sense of enthusiasm for learning this important biology concept.

“We took a project that was simple in elements to a much more complex level,” said Teaters. “It forced students to look at the parts and what they meant, and Inspiration was the perfect tool to do that.”

Teaters’ students constructed Inspiration “webs”—or visual maps—of a cell and the structure to which they compared it. To strengthen their learning of the composition of a cell, she asked them to draw the cell using Inspiration’s drawing tool. For each organelle, students found a corresponding function in their analogous structure and created a visual representation of the connection. With Inspiration’s vast library of symbols, graphics and photos, as well as images they imported, students were able to depict virtually anything they could visualize.

Teaters’ students constructed Inspiration “webs”—or visual maps—of a cell and the structure to which they compared it.

Perhaps the most common choice for the analogy was a shopping mall, where the information desk was usually compared to the nucleus of a cell, said Teaters, but she was impressed with the wide variety of ideas students presented, including a sporting event, a musical, a play, a marching band, a cruise ship, a factory, an airport and a household.

Using Inspiration’s audio and video features, students were able to add a deeper dimension to the project—something that would be impossible with posterboard. For example, some added narrations, and others followed suit. “My students loved using Inspiration for this project. Their creativity could flow,” she said.

When students completed their projects, they turned them in electronically, and from her computer, Teaters evaluated the thinking behind each part of the analogies, checking links and viewing the audio and visual components. “I was amazed. They far exceeded my expectations,” she said.

When comparing using Inspiration to the posterboard method, the advantages were clear. “My students were much more interested in the project, they cared more about it and they took more ownership of it. They wanted it to be perfect, and it added some healthy competition to the project.”

Teaters entered her cell analogy project in Inspiration Software’s Inspired Visual Learning Awards, and out of more than 220 entries from around the world, the project was selected for one of three Gold Star Awards, the award program’s highest level of recognition.

At every opportunity, Teaters incorporates technology into learning, using computers for a range of lessons, maintaining a class website and having her students create podcasts. “Technology is such a part of their culture, and it helps to teach in a world they understand,” she said. Inspiration is an integral part of her teaching, and she uses it throughout the school year to teach all kinds of concepts.

When she first introduces Inspiration to students who haven’t used it before, they are off and running with little explanation, she said. “Inspiration is such a user-friendly program that it takes less than one class period for them to explore it and see all the different capabilities they can use.”

They’ve also used Inspiration to do concept mapping on photosynthesis, cell transport, mitosis and meiosis. “It’s like a big, white piece of paper where they can move things around easily,” she said. Gateway High School’s math teachers have found Inspiration to be “one of the best tools for concept learning” in support of a schoolwide initiative to teach literacy skills across the curriculum.

Cindy Strotman, an English teacher at Gateway, is using concept learning in her classroom, too. In the past, she would use a desktop publishing program to have her students create concept maps, but she found it to be time-consuming. When planning a lesson on the short story “The Birds,” she decided to try Inspiration. “Sometimes technology can be so intimidating, and I knew nothing about the software, but just by opening and playing with it for three minutes, I could use it,” she said.

Her students caught on quickly, too, and were able to generate their own concept maps, whereas in the past, she had them fill out a concept map she had created. “They can draw them at their desks, and no two look the same. Students are more excited about creating them this way, and they have fun while learning the skills we need them to learn,” she said. Strotman finds Inspiration’s symbol library of tremendous benefit, she said. “It is so much better than what I had previously used. My students’ work is more visually attractive, and they’re inspired to ‘jazz it up.’ ”

After seeing its value in analyzing “The Birds,” Strotman turned to Inspiration to teach numerous literary works throughout the school year. Next, she plans to use Inspiration to teach writing. “I can see its potential is limitless in the English classroom,” she said. “Inspiration holds students’ interest and enhances our literacy initiatives schoolwide.”

In 1909, Cathedral School in Raleigh, N.C. first opened its doors in a two-room schoolhouse while historic events were unfolding around the globe: the Wright brothers were gaining international celebrity for their flying machines, the United States was signing a treaty with Colombia to build the Panama Canal and the first human was setting foot on the North Pole. In celebration of Cathedral School’s centennial, today’s students discovered the history that shaped North Carolina, the United States and the world over the past century—using Inspiration® 8, the essential tool to visualize, think, organize and learn from Inspiration Software®, Inc.

In this Catholic school serving 270 students in grades pre-kindergarten through eight, Kim Seder, the director of information and educational technology, in collaboration with classroom teachers and the school principal, created a project where students would construct Inspiration “webs”—or visual maps— to research, organize and evaluate significant events that occurred over the last 100 years. Seder selected templates from Inspiration’s expansive selection to use as the framework, and the students were off and running with the project.

“We wanted our kids to understand that Cathedral School students were here and prayed for people serving in the world wars and for the victims of the Titanic,” said Donna Moss, principal. “Inspiration was a great tool for stepping back and looking at the past in a way that was easy to understand, and the software never got in the way of the creativity.”

The students who were assigned the project—fourth through eighth graders—divided into groups to address individual decades, and some groups examined individual years. To align the project with diocesan standards, the teachers assigned fourth graders to North Carolina state history, fifth graders to U.S. history and middle school students to world history. “Inspiration makes it so easy to integrate projects into our curriculum,” said Seder. Students scoured online resources for events they found noteworthy. Using Inspiration as a brainstorming tool, the students were able to narrow down the list to the most relevant facts. With the vast library of clip art and photos in Inspiration, students graphically depicted each historical event.

Cathedral School fourth graders used Inspiration® to capture, categorize and organize their research on North Carolina state history.

“They loved searching for facts, and it was interesting to see which events caught their attention,” said Seder. “This project gave students an overview of history in an easy way, and Inspiration was the perfect tool. It would have been very difficult to organize the material without Inspiration Software,” she said.

Inspiration is a tool Seder reaches for time and time again, using it to help students visually outline and organize research papers and to create timelines. She said the classroom teachers often use it to introduce a concept. “Inspiration gives students such an amazing view of the subject. It’s a nice alternative to using traditional presentation software,” she said.

Working with Seder on the centennial project was Lisa Reidy, the social studies teacher to Cathedral’s middle school students. “It was an interesting project from every standpoint,” she said. “The students just took off with it, and my role was to coach them as they went along, to help them see what was important.”

Reidy’s students worked in groups, each looking for one significant event in a particular decade, such as the invention of the automobile, the Treaty of Versailles or the onset of World War I. “A lot of these events are things that adults take for granted that everyone knows, but they were new to the students. Now they have an overview,” she said.

Reidy found the project a valuable way to teach students how to conduct a research project, as well as an opportunity for writing practice. “I can get a lot more out of them with Inspiration because they love the technology,” she said. Students appreciate the ability to add elements to their Inspiration projects such as audio, video, pictures, diagrams and presentations, she noted. “The students learn how to organize and put everything together so it makes sense.”

Inspiration®’s Symbol Library provided Cathedral School middle school students with visual ways to represent historical world facts from the 1970s.

When her students completed their sections of the centennial project, Reidy went into Inspiration and checked their work—and was impressed with what she saw, she said. She had asked them for feedback about how they felt about their projects, too. “They gave me a lot of mature answers—that they learned so much and that they did it for their school. I loved what they had to say.”

Seder pointed out that a unique aspect of the centennial project was its inclusion of all the students in the school. While the older students created the Inspiration project documenting historical events, Cathedral School’s younger students joined in the festivities, too, making centennial art projects. “It was exciting to bring everyone together and work on something as a school,” she said. Added Reidy, “The students liked seeing what the other grades were doing and being part of something bigger.”

Reidy said the students had much pride in their work throughout the process and excitement that the end result would be on the school web site for all to see—for their families, school alumni, church parish members and others in the community. “I told them it shows people how far we’ve come with technology in our school,” she said.

When the project was complete, Seder entered it in Inspiration Software’s Inspired Visual Learning Awards. Out of more than 200 entries from around the world, the Cathedral School centennial project was selected for one of three Gold Star Awards, the award program’s highest level of recognition. “The students were already so excited about the project,” said Reidy, “and winning the award was the icing on the cake.” To see the students’ centennial project, go to www.cathedral-school.net/centennialproject/default.htm.

“Graphic organizers aren’t just for English classes,” emphasizes Jennifer Blair, Instructional Technology Facilitator for West Memorial Junior High in Katy, Texas. “Students can and should use graphic organizers in any subject requiring reading.” A 2007 Inspired Teacher Scholarship recipient, Blair works with educators throughout her school to integrate Inspiration® and visual learning techniques with cross-curricular instructional strategies.

Inspiration builds thinking and learning skills across the curriculum

Blair, who has used Inspiration for almost ten years, taught in the classroom for several years. Having acquired an in-depth knowledge of instructional strategies, she helps other teachers learn how to integrate technology and visual learning into daily instruction. For example, note-taking is one area in particular where Blair believes technology and visual learning complement the learning process. She shows students and teachers how to use Inspiration to take notes in any area across the curriculum. Students begin in Diagram View where they create graphic organizers to organize their information and notes. Then they can switch to Outline View to add details and study their notes. “Many students grasp the information much easier when they can take notes using a graphic organizer rather than just answering questions from a textbook,” says Blair.

The district, which Blair describes as "strategy-driven," advocates the use of CRISS (Creating Independence through Student-owned Strategies) to teach students how to learn. Project CRISS emphasizes a clear path to learning which involves reading for understanding, discussing and organizing main ideas, and reflecting on or writing about the learning. (For more information about Project CRISS, see www.projectcriss.org.) Blair feels that Inspiration works seamlessly with these strategies as a way for students to take notes, organize information and, by switching to Outline View, prepare to write about the learning. New features in Inspiration 8, such as the variety of templates, more than 1 million symbols and the Word Guide—an integrated dictionary and thesaurus, help students more precisely organize and write. “I want students to develop the mental condition where they think about how they learn best and then use those strategies,” says Blair.

According to school Principal Patti Shafer, Blair’s efforts are paying off. “It is exhilarating to watch teachers and students get excited about the use of technology,” Shafer says. “Jennifer makes this happen through visual learning.”

Jennifer Blair uses Inspiration® to help junior high students implement learning strategies, such as taking notes, summarizing and organizing information, and writing about their learning.

Using Inspiration to meet curriculum requirements and prepare for state testing in social studies

As a member of the district's Social Studies Advanced Placement Vertical Team, Blair works closely with the social studies teachers to integrate Inspiration. She offers Inspiration training courses, works with teachers to demonstrate how visual learning matches up with objectives and standards, and creates lessons specifically designed to meet curriculum requirements.

This year, she is also training the teachers to create incomplete scenario questions in Inspiration, the type that are often found on the state tests. The comprehensive exam in social studies is administered for the first time at the end of the 8th grade year, so it is important for teachers to prepare students for the types of questions they might encounter.

This type of incomplete scenario question is often encountered on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), the exam given at the end of 8th grade. Inspiration helps teachers easily create these types of questions.

Blair looks forward to working more with teachers in the school to integrate Inspiration across the curriculum. She is proud that her school currently has the most Inspiration files on the district server, even though they are the smallest school. She plans to continue the school’s success by providing additional Inspiration training that focuses on concrete examples to improve students’ thinking and learning strategies. “When students use Inspiration they get excited about learning,” concludes Blair. “Students need to develop the ability to create things on their own. Inspiration allows them to be self-sufficient.”

Visually organizing characters and scenes deepens understanding and appreciation

High school students use the power of visual learning to brush up their understanding of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Senior Honors English teacher Vicki Broadhead uses Inspiration to help students understand the play’s characters, its metaphors, and its major themes. Students create character webs, map out the play’s scenes, and make graphic organizers representing the metaphors they discover in the densely written lines.

“I’ve developed a plan of what I want to happen,” said Broadhead. “But even my best students need more time to understand Shakespeare than they do for other pieces of literature.”

The process of making character web diagrams helped students comprehend Lady Macbeth, Banquo, and the other characters more fully by linking their actions, motives, and interactions with one another. And the webs helped students justify their impressions of these literary characters because they cited specific text as part of the diagramming process.

Using an Inspiration template made it easy for students to start a character web. For Lady Macbeth, Broadhead’s students selected Template under the File menu, then clicked on Language Arts – Character Web. This template gave them a starter document for mapping out Lady Macbeth’s key characteristics. After entering her name in the “primary character” main idea symbol, students then entered her characteristics into subsymbols, linking each to examples and details in the play’s text. For example, under “ambitious,” they cited the lines in which Lady Macbeth encouraged her husband to commit murder in order to become king.

As they made their way through the play, the students continued to edit their character webs as they discovered more. At the same time, they used graphic organizers to investigate the play’s other components, such as scene development and major themes. Inspiration gave students a visual tool to name, organize, and express the play’s many dimensions. Each student had the opportunity to understand the whole of Macbeth, from character development to moral lessons.

Graphic organizers created in Inspiration help Vicki Broadhead’s students study more effectively and get better grades on their Honors English tests.

Inspiration also gave Broadhead the ability to create templates herself, such as the one used by students to map out scenes. Inspiration templates made it easy to get started on a specific lesson while still keeping students focused on the play. To create the template, Broadhead selected the type of graphic organizer she wanted students to use. With Macbeth as the main idea, and each scene as a subtopic, students then used the template to quickly capture and organize the events of each scene. Broadhead noted that she enjoyed the flexibility to customize a template for Macbeth and then to leave that same template openended for use with other plays.It takes more than Lady Macbeth’s flickering candle to shed light on Shakespeare for eager Honors English students. It takes the visual learning power of Inspiration to ignite students’ interest in classical literature.

Better writing from sometimes-reluctant learners attributed to Inspiration

Part of the power of visual learning lies in its clarity. “When the material is done well, viewers seem to absorb the meanings almost intuitively,” says Hoppy Chandler, a high school teacher in San Diego, California. “Understanding happens with less effort.”

A few choice words, symbols, and links smartly arranged into a diagram like those created by Inspiration are “very effective in explaining complex concepts or conveying ideas,” he continues. “And the format is so different from the norm that students want to look. They can’t help but learn.”

In addition to teaching, Chandler serves as Twain’s Digital High School coordinator, and has been involved with an ILAST state grant for professional development. He continues to provide technology support and training for his colleagues. Chandler has used Inspiration for more than 10 years and also trained “thousands” of his peers in its use. He’s a champion for the visual learning tool. This software lets people build diagrams and outlines with “amazing speed,” he notes, and for an endless variety of purposes. His own applications, for example, include planning lessons, making handouts for students, and creating training materials for other educators.

“What I like best about using Inspiration is that as fast as you can type, you’re generating ideas; you’re brainstorming. Call it ‘mind on task’ time; it’s invaluable! Then—and this is truly liberating—the program automatically reorganizes it for you as elements get added, deleted, modified, and moved around.” explains Chandler.

From balkers to believers

Chandler’s enthusiasm for the software is compelling. Two San Diego City Unified schools, Lincoln Senior High, where he taught previously, and Twain Junior/Senior High, his current campus home, have purchased dozens of copies of Inspiration for students and staff to use. “I’ve even gotten a few administrators intrigued enough to at least fiddle around with it,” chuckles the veteran teacher.

Twain is a continuation school, enrolling from 650 to 1,000 students in grades 7-12 drawn from all over San Diego. It has older computers, mostly Macintoshes, and licenses for 65 copies of Inspiration. Chandler teaches English and social studies to grades 9-12 at Twain, and his students use Inspiration routinely for class work—especially for writing and planning projects. In the beginning, however, these reluctant learners are known to resist.

“Early on I have my students do a genealogy of their family with an Inspiration diagram,” says Chandler. “They usually balk until they get about halfway through the project, and then, suddenly, it’s ‘oh, I get it.’ That’s when they start to see how useful this program can be.” After creating their family trees using Inspiration’s library of more than 1,250 symbols, Chandler encourages the teens to bring in family photographs. Once digitized, the photos can replace symbols, making the final project a unique personal history worth saving.

“Another sure-fire way to hook someone’s interest is my two minute drill,” says Chandler. “I show how to go from Inspiration to a PowerPoint slide show in just three steps (create, export, open) in less than two minutes! It’s pretty slick.”

Chandler emphatically singles out Inspiration’s positive impact on students’ writing. With one click, Inspiration instantly transforms diagrams into outlines. In a traditional hierarchical outline, students quickly organize the flow of information and structure their writing. And since it’s simple to move topics around, Chandler believes his students are using some of the time they save to think and to reflect about what, exactly, they want their words to convey.

“They clearly do better writing with Inspiration,” he states simply. “It takes two or three assignments for them to realize that—and a lot of motivation on their part to follow through—but now their written work is starting to actually say something. They are bringing their stories to life.”

Inspiration reveals student’s talent

One student’s experience illustrates how Inspiration projects can open new doors unexpectedly. Twain Junior/Senior High requires its students to pass a senior exit interview, a verbal examination by a panel of teachers in which students must demonstrate some of what they have learned.

As Chandler recalls, this particular student attended the continuation school because she had become a mother at about age 14. For her exit interview, she gave an oral history presentation on the Holocaust. She had started off with an Inspiration outline, he says, though she took it farther by exporting her work to a presentation program. “This student stood up in her exit interview and just wowed all of us,” remembers Chandler. “She knew her material cold, and was polished and poised, a real natural speaker.”

By happenstance, the district’s Superintendent Technology Advisory Committee, including the superintendent, were on the Twain campus soon after the student’s presentation. She was asked to give her presentation again. “She spoke for 45 minutes, entertained questions, and just knocked them out,” says Chandler, who was at both sessions. “And it all began with Inspiration.”

Inspiration, the powerful visual thinking software tool, supports learning in schools across the country by inspiring students to brainstorm, organize, plan and create. In Nebraska, the State Department of Education uses Inspiration Software's flagship product to help manage the complex issues involved with implementing state standards, to understand President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" initiative, to plan education events and to guide and recap community presentations and planning sessions.

A 30-year veteran of the Nebraska Department of Education, John Clark is aware of the agency’s intricate structure and the complex issues it faces. Led by the State Commissioner of Education, the department carries out state and federal statutes and the policy directions of the State Board of Education. It acts on behalf of Nebraska students in public, private and nonpublic school systems and interacts with colleges and universities.

In his role as Administrator for Communication Systems, Clark is responsible for helping staff members ensure that the department’s internal and external audiences understand the issues on the agency’s agenda so that they can make informed decisions on both state and local levels. In 1995, he was looking for a software tool that would help him do this when he saw Inspiration in a magazine. Clark says he quickly ordered an evaluation copy. It arrived at his office early one afternoon, and he spent the rest of the day immersed in the visual thinking software. “I kept calling people into my office and saying ‘Look what I can do,’” he says. “Since then, the product has expanded and grown.”

Visually illustrating standards

Like other states, Nebraska is in the process of implementing state standards. Clark found it virtually impossible to illustrate standards in a traditional way because of the dependencies and integration amongst the various audiences and curricular areas. Yet it is critical that the members of the State Board of Education have a clear picture of the state’s process for adopting the standards structure. To help department staff and state board members visualize their roles, Clark began to use Inspiration to develop a flow chart that illustrates the process for adopting standards.

Clark says this flow chart started as an 11 by 17 inch document and has grown to a wall-size poster that is also used for display at other events as a graphic tool for guiding the progress of the state’s schools.

Clark also used Inspiration to develop a similar chart tracking the timeline for President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” initiative, which was then presented to the board and school district audiences to demonstrate the massive nature of this education act.

Capturing community conversation

Clark says that Nebraska Commissioner of Education Doug Christensen is also a visual thinker who used to draw on flip charts with markers when making the many public presentations that are part of his responsibilities as the state’s chief educator. Clark used Inspiration to develop a concept map from Christensen’s presentations. Now each time Christensen presents, new ideas are captured in Inspiration. This is particularly useful when Christensen is meeting with community-based groups and other constituents who are sharing their opinions on education in Nebraska. The result, says Clark, is always a living, growing document—not flipcharts that often sit on a shelf in the office rolled up with a rubber band around them.

The Nebraska Department of Education uses Inspiration to visually illustrate the process for adopting standards, shown in this excerpt of the state's three-year plan.

Clark also says he and his colleagues use Inspiration to plan the numerous events that the department hosts. “The fun part of Inspiration is that you can do a proportional time scale, with appropriate distance between events. You can schedule programs, then evaluate your scheduling and make minor time tweaks and other changes,” he says. “You can do all of this live while you are in a meeting so that the plan grows as you meet and you have a product at the end. And the document is created by the planners—not by support staff following the meeting.”

The Nebraska Department of Education also uses Inspiration for what Clark calls “conversation capture” at large scale, multi-session events. For example, the department recently hosted a series of “Policy Partner Forums” at four different locations around the state. Teachers, school board members and Intermediate Unit leaders participated in this three- to four-hour discussion session on the topic of effective use of data from student assessment. Recording and compiling the discussion at these types of events used to be “excruciating,” says Clark. “You had a room full of tables, two pages of flip chart per table, and then you had to try to get a report out in a timely manner. It was awful.”

Inspiration has changed all that. At the recent meetings, as table presenters reported their discussions, they were quickly recorded using Inspiration’s RapidFire® tool. In 30 minutes flat, five to six tables had reported their discussions, and their ideas were graphically illustrated in an integrated document. After four meetings, the combined Inspiration diagram was switched to outline format and exported to Microsoft Word. The result was a six-page summary document to communicate the results of the meetings to state board members and forum participants.

Facilitating and communicating committee work

Clark also uses Inspiration to create conceptual histories that help new members joining the department’s work groups understand program history and interrelationships. For example, he used Inspiration with a statewide committee that was looking at language arts education responsibilities in both K-12 schools and colleges and universities. He worked with the group of classroom teachers, college professors and school administrators to capture their discussions and illustrate the responsibilities that they were defining. “When one of the university faculty members saw what I was doing with Inspiration, he immediately said ‘I’ve got to have that,’” says Clark.

Because the information that Clark was recording in Inspiration combined all meeting discussions in one diagram, committee members saw their progress and often realized that as they moved further along in their discussions, ideas or concepts from earlier meetings fit into the picture in a new way. The diagram became a flow chart and progress report that the committee ultimately presented to the board of education.

Clark says he uses Inspiration maps as his handouts when he makes presentations. That way attendees have the whole conceptual schema of the presentation in one document. “When graphical people used to try to share ideas, they had to resort to drawing diagrams on placemats and then revising them over and over,” he says. “Today, you can just use Inspiration.”

Students achieve higher test results after learning to organize and take notes with Inspiration

Things haven’t always been this rosy at Skyview High School. Students in Tom Stahley’s science class used to feel overwhelmed by their schoolwork. They took notes and studied for tests, but struggled with the difficult process of organizing and prioritizing information. Many students couldn’t determine what information was important, so they took notes on everything. Later, when they reviewed their notes, all the insignificant facts they had written made studying time consuming and often ineffective.

Research project tests visual learning methods

Tom Stahley, a science teacher at Skyview, was concerned about his students’ problems. He wanted to find a way to help them improve their skills in note taking and organization. An adventurous user of Inspiration, he thought the students would benefit from using the techniques of visual learning when studying and organizing for tests. Together with teachers from two other city high schools, Stahley organized a state-funded research project with ninth- and tenth-grade students. His goal was to determine if using graphic organizers as study tools, such as those created in Inspiration, could be the key to helping students organize their notes in a logical, effective way.

For the first part of the research project, the students studied a challenging passage of text. Stahley evaluated their notes and found that only 18 percent of the students were able to organize their work effectively. The students then took a quiz on the material from the text. The students’ test scores reflected their weak study skills and lack of organization.

Graphic organizers created in Inspiration help Tom Stahley’s students study more effectively and get better grades on their science tests.

It was time to bring in the remedy— graphic organizing with Inspiration!

Students were taught how to use Inspiration to record important information and prepare for tests. They used the computer to practice constructing concept maps and mind maps, illustrating their key points in Inspiration with colors and symbols.

The students also learned important steps to keep in mind when collecting and organizing information. By following some basic guidelines when working in Inspiration, the students could determine what information was essential and what was not as significant. “Many students enjoyed the visual organization strategies,” commented Stahley. “They took time to seek out pertinent information and paid more attention to how they were organizing content.”

The results are in ... testing proved that visual learning improves study skills!

After spending several weeks learning about Inspiration and graphic organizers, the students were ready to be tested on the skills they were practicing. They read a second science passage and used the new organization techniques they had learned to take notes in Inspiration. Then they took a test over the material. Stahley found that an astounding 81 percent of the students organized information effectively after learning to use Inspiration to create graphic organizers, and 36 percent of the students showed improvement on their test scores!

Following the study, many of the students were so excited about Inspiration, they began using it in their other classes to help them organize class notes. Some of the students shared with their other teachers how much Inspiration had helped them. Because of the students’ and teachers’ enthusiasm, Inspiration training is now available throughout the district. According to the teachers involved in the study, “We want to get the word out about the powerful effect Inspiration has on students’ motivation and learning!”

Diagramming test material proves to be better method of helping students memorize and recall information

Students at Pope John Paul II, a preschool through eighth grade school in Citrus County, Florida, are clamoring to use Inspiration to help them study for tests. The results of a recent social studies test proved that visual learning techniques helped the students remember information better than just reading the chapter. Plus, they had a great time working as a team to learn new information.

In October 2002, students in eighth grade social studies were having trouble concentrating on their work. The students’ lack of motivation prompted their teacher to assign them an entire chapter to read and study; a test over the material would follow the next day. School principal Lou Whitaker heard about the students’ assignment and decided it would be a great opportunity to help them use Inspiration to study for their test. She asked the eighth graders to read the social studies chapter and then bring their textbooks to the computer lab the following day.

Inspiration in a one-computer classroom

Using a computer connected to a television screen, Whitaker led the students in a discussion of their social studies chapter. Together, they worked in Inspiration to determine the main idea and then place subtopics and supporting details into their diagram. “They were very engaged,” recalls Whitaker. “The students were able to teach other students and help each other learn. They really enjoyed working with Inspiration.”

The students ran out of time with only half of the chapter mapped out, so they did a quick review of the Inspiration diagram they had created and left to take the test. The next day, Whitaker asked the students how they had done on the test. “Oh, Mrs. Whitaker, we all got C's! said the students.

Surprised by the average scores, Whitaker investigated further and found that the students had earned A's on the first half of the test and F’s on the second half. They knew all the answers from the part of the chapter that was diagrammed in Inspiration. "They could see the diagram in their minds and remember the connections between the information," says Whitaker. "But when they came to questions from the last half of the chapter, they couldn't recall what they had read."

In less than two hours, Lou Whitaker learned how to use Inspiration and built this diagram on neurons for a pesentation

Whitaker wanted to find out how the eighth graders felt about the study method, so she gave them a survey asking questions about Inspiration. The results showed that 73 percent of the students said that using Inspiration to review chapter material helped them a great deal, and 86 percent felt they would have done better on the test if they had used Inspiration to review the entire chapter.

Search for brain-based technology tools leads to Inspiration

The dramatic results from the students’ test didn’t really surprise Whitaker. She’s been recommending Inspiration in presentations and workshops since 1999, after discovering it while doing research for a presentation on brain-based education. In less than two hours she had explored the program and built a diagram to demonstrate a part of the brain. Whitaker was impressed with Inspiration—not only how appropriate it was for brain-based education, but also how easy it was to learn and use. In fact, she decided to include Inspiration in her presentation, demonstrating how to use the software as a tool to enhance learning. “I'm sure the reason I received such great evaluations was because of Inspiration,” laughs Whitaker.

In her Kidspiration and Inspiration presentations, Whitaker often asks for a show of hands to find out who is currently using the software. As hands go up, she asks for feedback on the programs. “I’ve never heard a negative comment,” says Whitaker. “Educators say that once their teachers get comfortable with it, the students love it, and the key is just practice.”

Whitaker hopes to get her sixth through eighth grade teachers up and running with Inspiration during the remainder of the 2003 school year. Thanks to the spontaneous “action research” performed earlier in the year, she has confidence in the benefits of using Inspiration to help students learn to study and take notes.

Whitaker relates, “What’s great about Inspiration is that it can be used as a teaching tool no matter what subject area you teach—science, social studies, math—it hits them all. If teachers have sequential thinkers in their classroom, they can give them an outline. For the visual thinkers, they can give them a diagram. The program meets everyone's needs.”

Story webs impress judges and earn students a presentation on local television

Students coming in early to work on projects? Entering and winning competitions, and training other students to use software? No, it isn’t a dream sequence in a movie. It is just another normal day at Queensbury Union Free School District in Queensbury, New York.

Inspiration fever is spreading fast here, fueled by the enthusiasm of Kyle Gannon’s sixth grade language arts class. The students competed in the Student Technology Expo supported by Columbia University’s North Hudson Electronic Education Empowerment Project (NHEEEP), where they won top honors for their age group by presenting story webs created with Inspiration.

Inspiration makes story mapping a cinch

Gannon used to do semantic mapping with his students on a dry erase board. But the process was often cumbersome and frustrating. Students each had to read the same book and it was difficult to hold their attention. Even so, Gannon felt that mapping was necessary. “Writing is so important. You have to become a dominant writer to become a dominant student, but every teacher hears ‘I don’t know what to write’ all the time. Mapping helps students get their creative energy "owing so they can begin the writing process.”

Today, mapping and writing is easier for Gannon’s students. Now they are each free to pick their own books and then do their own maps using Inspiration. “This allows students to have some choice in what they are doing. It really helps them feel like the project is their own,” says Gannon. “As they read their books, they are thinking about their maps. Oftentimes, they can tell me which symbols will be used for each topic before they sit down at a computer!”

After finishing their reading, the students set o$ to the computer lab. Here they begin to “web out” their stories using Inspiration. According to their teacher, “They like to type, so getting them to put their ideas down is easy. And they love to use Inspiration’s brainstorming tool, RapidFire®. . . it’s a chance to get all their great ideas out as quickly as possible.”

Creating award-winning projects

For most students, the first step in developing their maps is to search the Internet to find a photo of the book cover. After dragging and dropping this image into their diagram, it becomes their new main idea. Before using the Internet though, students discuss plagiarism. “We have to be very careful about plagiarism. Students don’t even think about it until we talk about it. But I tell them that they must try to get permission for everything they bring into Inspiration from the Internet.”

Then it’s time to flesh out their work with research. Gannon sends his students on an Internet search to find out more about the story and its author. For each site they discover, the students place a hyperlink into their diagrams. “They love to hyperlink to web pages. To click on a link and actually have it open a page with information that pertains to their topic is great.”

To compete in the NHEEEP expo, several of Gannon’s students took their writing projects a step further. Gannon opened the computer lab before school for several days and students voluntarily (and excitedly) came in each morning to work on creatively customizing and enhancing their diagrams. They learned how to change the colors of symbols, make di$erent types of links, and personalize their outlines by changing topic fonts and colors. They also expanded their web research and added hyperlinks to online author chats.

As his students’ knowledge grew, so did their confidence. “Anytime there was a computer free, students were begging to use Inspiration. Many of them have now advanced beyond my capabilities with the program,” says Gannon.

Story webs wow audience

Finally, it was show time for the tech expo crew. Gannon loaded up the laptops, a monitor, and seven of his most inspired students and o$ they went. As the students began showing their projects to a group of judges, the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ they heard when they changed a diagram into an outline fueled their excitement.

Many of the other school districts at the expo were not familiar with Inspiration, but thanks to Gannon’s students, everyone knew about the program by the time the day was over. Throughout the show, his students displayed diagrams on Harry Potter, Julie of the Wolves, and Treasure Island to teachers and students from about 30 other NHEEEP schools.

Enthusiasm generated by the presentation even caught the attention of a local television crew at the show, and the students were invited to present their projects on TV! When the day ended, the group was awarded top honors for their age division and received a digital camera for their prize. According to their teacher, the students immediately saw an inspiring use for this new toy. “Now they can’t wait to take pictures to include in their diagrams!”

Easy-to-use visual learning tool helps students earn top scores

Many students rely on Inspiration® for help with their most challenging assignments. Using Inspiration for both classroom assignments and homework, students easily move their projects along from initial brainstorming to successful completion. What’s more, Inspiration helps students improve the quality of their work—resulting in impressive grades and praise from their teachers.

Quick and easy organization

Inspiration helped Kristen Humberger complete a thoughtful, well-organized project for her history class. A junior at Massaponax High School in Virginia, Kristen was struggling with an assignment about events leading to the Civil War. Kristen had thoroughly researched the topic and had gathered so much information she didn’t know where to start. She was having trouble finding just the right way to creatively organize and present her work. Kristen’s mom, Diane Humberger, had recently completed an Inspiration introduction class in the school district where she works. She convinced Kristen to try using Inspiration to develop her project.

Within minutes Kristen learned the basics of Inspiration. She began her Inspiration diagram by creating a graphic for each event leading to the Civil War. She organized events into a timeline, linked information, and added descriptions and resulting consequences. To further illustrate her ideas, Kristen then added graphics from Inspiration’s extensive symbol library, including pictures of Abe Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, and other government and historical symbols.

Kudos on assignment

Kristen’s seven-page project earned a perfect score and an "excellent" from her history teacher. The teacher even asked to keep Kristen’s project to show other students as an example of creativity and organization.

Pleased with the success of her history project, Kristen started using Inspiration for assignments in other classes. She’s looking forward to using Inspiration for senior chemistry, biology, and government assignments this school year. “I particularly like two things about Inspiration. It’s easy to use and it has neat graphics,” she says.

The “wow” factor

Maris Cohen, an eighth grader at Bryn Mawr School in Maryland, began using Inspiration six years ago. Her mom, Cheryl Cohen, a library media specialist and former English teacher, introduced her to the program. “We would use the templates to play word games,” says Maris. Since then, she has used Inspiration for many different types of school projects.

Kristen Humberger used Inspiration to organize her thoughts and create a seven-page report for an assignment.

One project Maris completed for an ancient history class made a big impression on her teacher. The assignment involved demonstrating the cultural effects of monsoons on the people of India. After researching this topic, Maris used Inspiration to organize the various effects of monsoons into categories. To visually enhance her project, she then imported photos depicting India’s people and way of life from the Internet. The result was a stunning diagram reflecting Maris’ thorough research and artistic design. “Without Inspiration I would have spent hours on this project. Now it just looks like I did!” says Maris.

Her teacher was so impressed with the final project she gave Maris an A+. She also showed Maris’ project to the class as an example of what she expected of them—organized, concise, creative work. Then she contacted Maris’ mom to get more information about Inspiration!

Both Kristen and Maris will continue using Inspiration in their schoolwork. “I plan to use Inspiration this year in homework and classroom assignments,” says Kristen. “I’m not sure if many students in our schools are aware of how helpful it can be and how easy it is to learn.”

When teachers from Denver Public Schools put Inspiration® and Kidspiration® on the top of their technology wish list, district administrators discovered that the Inspiration Software® Comprehensive License Program was an easy, cost-effective and legally licensed way to put the visual learning software products at their fingertips. Now with the graphic organizers loaded on all instructional computers, teachers in grades K-12 are using visual learning across the curriculum to help students develop strong thinking and organizational skills and improve their academic performance.

Inspiration and Kidspiration Top Teachers’ “Wish” List

More than 250 teachers from Denver Public Schools went to the Colorado Technology in Education Conference looking for new ways to use technology to improve teaching and learning for the city’s 73,000 students. In follow-up workshops with many of these teachers, they expressed a strong interest in using Inspiration and Kidspiration in their classrooms and schools.

Educational Technology Specialist Lee Hayward says it is rare to find teachers agreeing on the same new instructional tool, but when his district’s teachers talk about using Inspiration and Kidspiration, their enthusiasm is apparent.

“I love Kidspiration for grades K to 5 because it is so incredibly versatile,” says Erin Daly, a technology teacher at Schenck Elementary School. “I adapt any curricular lesson to use Kidspiration. Visual organizers are available for math, science, language arts or social studies. It is an essential tool in my tech lab.”

Many Denver teachers were already using Inspiration and Kidspiration before the movement for districtwide adoption grew out of the education technology conference. In the past, individual schools bought single copies of Inspiration and Kidspiration for classrooms and computer labs and the district purchased a copy for each elementary school. However, Hayward says, “We really wanted students using the software at all grade levels and across the curriculum.”

Offering visual learning software across the district

Denver Public Schools was looking for an easy, cost-effective and legally licensed way to make the visual learning software products available to all teachers and students. When Hayward learned about the Inspiration Software Comprehensive License Program, he decided that it would meet the district’s needs, offering an easy way to purchase Inspiration and Kidspiration with the confidence that all copies are properly licensed.

When the Educational Technology Department had a discussion about how to spend some Title IID money, it decided to pursue purchase of the comprehensive license from Inspiration Software. This was an exception for Denver schools, says Hayward. As a district that is managed at the buildinglevel, decisions about purchasing instructional materials are normally made by each school. In fact, Inspiration Software is Denver Public Schools’ only comprehensive instructional software license. “This is not normally something we do,” he adds.

Hayward worked with Inspiration Software to come up with a “Good Faith Estimate” of the number of instructional computers in the district—the comprehensive volume licensing program doesn’t require an exact count of computers. He was pleased to learn that the district’s current licenses for Inspiration and Kidspiration were considered when the pricing for the license was determined. Also because the comprehensive licensing program is reviewed and adjusted for new computers just once annually, Hayward only needs to place one order per year with Inspiration Software. He now saves valuable time that in the past might have been spent getting approval for and processing multiple orders throughout the school year. The district will also get special pricing on future upgrades.

“Inspiration Software worked closely with us and so it was easy to offer our teachers and students access to these valuable learning tools,” Hayward says. “We anticipate that it will be easy to manage the licenses.”

Developing customized professional development for Inspiration and Kidspiration

Hayward and his colleagues knew that purchasing the comprehensive license was only the first step in encouraging the use of visual learning throughout the district. The software was installed on computers throughout Denver’s 148 schools over a two-month period. With the software, teachers received a two page “Quickie” tip sheet to help them quickly learn to use Inspiration and Kidspiration.

Hayward and his team then used Inspiration Software’s professional development scripts to develop in-service training on visual learning teaching strategies. These workshops are being conducted throughout the district as requested by principals and teachers.

“With the ease of managing the Inspiration Software comprehensive license, we were able to put our time and energy into ensuring that our teachers have adequate professional development on using Inspiration and Kidspiration to support instruction,” adds Hayward.

“Great things” to come with Inspiration and Kidspiration

Hayward says that because Inspiration and Kidspiration were number one on the Denver teachers’ wish list, enthusiasm for using the software in the classroom is the highest he has ever seen for a technology learning tool. Teachers in grades K-12 are using the software to support teaching and learning, and visual learning is becoming an important part of the district’s instructional program at all levels. For example, Elma Ruiz, a member of the district’s central literacy team and coordinator of the Reading First grant, says they have added Inspiration and Kidspiration to the district’s list of approved literacy software.

“We have only just begun to see the benefits. We anticipate great things as the school year progresses,” concludes Hayward.

New York students are ‘inspired’ to write better essays

Students across the state of New York are finding that visual learning methods help them prepare for The New York State Regents Comprehensive Examination in English. Taken during a student’s junior year, the exam (and a passing score!) is a requirement for high school graduation. Essays make up a significant portion of the test, and require students to analyze and interpret information and write clear, organized responses. Inspiration helps students prepare for the test because it helps them organize their thoughts clearly, in preparation for writing.

In Westchester County, at Walter Panas High School in Lakeland Central School District, Sue Erichsen’s students use Inspiration to prepare for the Regents exam. She created a series of graphic organizers in Inspiration to help her eleventh-grade English students compare the literary elements in the various worlds or “sivilizations” that Huck Finn experiences throughout Mark Twain’s classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Learning literary elements with Inspiration

During a six-week unit, students read each chapter in the book and brainstorm about Huck’s experiences. In small groups, they create a graphic organizer depicting each of Huck’s worlds and then discuss them as a class. Linda Brandon, Lakeland CSD’s technology training coordinator, observed Erichsen’s students during one of these discussions. “The students were in groups, huddled around their diagrams. They were very engaged in discussing the assignment.” Using Inspiration to map out the literary elements helps Erichsen’s students gain a deeper understanding of the novel. In fact, about 80 percent of the students will use The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as one of the two literary works for discussion in the fourth section of the Regents exam. “To be able to write rich essays, students must get a good handle on the works they’ve read and the various literary elements that make up the work,” says Erichsen. “Creating maps of the literary elements helps the students effectively compare and contrast Huck’s various worlds.”

Erichsen uses E.W. Kemble’s illustrations from the first edition of Huckleberry Finn in her diagrams.
“The Shanty” by E.W. Kemble is used with permission from the University of Virginia library (http://etext.virginia.edu).

Erichsen uses Inspiration to help students prepare for the Regents exam, with the goal of helping them develop skills that will carry them well beyond their high school examinations. “My students will walk away from this activity, not only learning how to analyze a particular book, but also absorbing the process for learning that they can use in similar situations with success.”

In another part of New York, Sister Rosemarie Baglivio, CSJ, an English and study skills teacher at Bishop Kearney High School in Brooklyn (and a 2002 Inspired Teacher Scholarship winner), has used Inspiration for the past two years with her ninth- and tenth-grade students. Like Sue Erichsen, Sister Baglivio uses the software to prepare students for the Regents English Exam.

Organizing for writing

According to Baglivio, the biggest problems her students face in writing are poor organization and a lack of critical thinking skills. Beginning with her incoming freshman, Baglivio develops activities to help her students learn to organize and expand their thoughts. In one activity, Baglivio uses Inspiration with her ninth-grade students to analyze the characters in The Necklace and The Jewels, short stories by Guy de Maupassant. Baglivio’s students create character webs in Inspiration to analyze the main characters in the stories. After completing and discussing their character webs, students convert their webs to outlines, and expand on their ideas to write a character analysis essay.

Baglivio creates a variety of Inspiration activities to prepare students for the Regents exam. For example, one section of the exam presents students with a quote from a literary work and requires them to respond with an essay discussing the quote using two additional pieces of literature.

To practice this skill, Baglivio gives her students a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and asks them to write an essay discussing the quote, pulling in examples from the text. The class first discusses what makes a good essay response using the scoring rubric from the Regents exam. Baglivio then shows them how to use Inspiration to organize their essay. Her students use an Inspiration template she created to help them organize their work to develop a fuller, more focused written response.

While Inspiration helps Baglivio’s students prepare for the Regents exam, visual learning has become a larger part of their learning experiences. “They really enjoy using Inspiration to organize for writing,” says Baglivio. “Many of them have started to organize other papers in Inspiration—even when it is not required.”

When students arrive at Crossroads Center, part of the New Beginnings Educational Complex in Kissimmee, Fla., they’re sorely in need of a second chance. An alternative school in The School District of Osceola County, Crossroads serves more than 500 “at risk” students with behavioral problems in kindergarten through grade 12. They attend in lieu of expulsion from their home-zone schools. Some stay for just a semester, and others as long as two years, to get themselves back on track.

“These are kids who have never felt they could excel at anything – students who are viewed as ‘bad kids at the bad school,’” says Terri Inwood, business-education teacher of Crossroads’ middle and high school students. “My goal is to show them that they can succeed.”

It is no small feat for Inwood. She must teach her students what they need to know to pass the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) and to graduate. In addition to behavioral issues, many students at Crossroads come with language barriers and/or from low-income homes.

Inwood integrates core subjects into her business-ed curriculum, demonstrating math, reading and writing in “real world form.” The most di!cult subject for her students is writing – or at least it was until she started using Inspiration®. The essential tool to visualize, think, organize and learn, Inspiration provides powerful support for critical thinking, comprehension and writing in all curriculum areas.

Bringing Inspiration to her students

Eleven years ago, Inwood taught at a school for students with severe disabilities. It was there she discovered Inspiration could help students "nd their voices in writing, and she has been “hooked” ever since. “It was a very easy way for them to put their thoughts down on paper,” she says.

When she arrived at Crossroads six years ago, she was tasked with bringing up failing writing scores on the FCAT. “My students just didn’t understand how to write, and I thought, ‘Bingo! I can teach them with Inspiration,’” she says.

With funding from two grants, Inwood secured 20 computers for her classroom and 13 more for the New Beginnings media center, which Crossroads shares with another campus. Inspiration is installed on every computer.

Putting Inspiration to work

Inwood introduces Inspiration to her students every fall by having them write “All About Me” essays. “Inspiration gives them an enjoyable way to write—without feeling like they’re writing,” she says. She points out that the most essential skill she can teach is brainstorming. “If you can’t brainstorm, you’re never going to get it. Inspiration makes learning so easy.”

Every day for the first nine weeks of school, Inwood’s students write a new essay in preparation for the FCAT. She begins by creating a web in Inspiration, giving students a prompt and a topic, such as “What if the state of Florida mandated that students wear uniforms to school?” She asks them to type their responses in the provided symbol in the web, revise as they go and critique each other’s work.

After the FCAT is behind them, students begin a long-term project of researching and writing about a randomly selected U.S. state. “I teach them how to use the Internet properly – they learn it’s not just for games and MySpace,” says Inwood. She requires research in at least 20 different areas about their chosen state, including its capital, history, flag, bird, flower, motto, history, population, climate and economy. The students illustrate their graphic organizers with photos or graphics from the more than one million symbols available from Inspiration’s Web Resources or from the Internet. “My students put the information they find into a format they feel proud of,” she says.

Inwood’s students also use Inspiration to write about everything from famous people who have inspired them to their favorite jungle animals. Seniors at Crossroads are required to create a portfolio project, and many choose to plan it using Inspiration. Those who do, she says, typically receive A grades because they’re so well organized. “From day one when you show them how to use it, they are off and running,” she says.

With nine of the 12 teachers new to the campus this year, many of them have not yet had a chance to learn about Inspiration, so Inwood is planning a workshop to show them what the visual learning software can do. “The teachers are excited to learn about it,” she says. “We all want to use everything we have to reach these kids.”

Building writing skills in leaps and bounds

Inwood’s students are making incredible strides. Every one of the 150 students she teaches is now earning at least the minimum passing grade of 4 out of 6 in writing on the FCAT. “These are kids who didn’t know how to write at all – who previously were at a 1 or a 2,” she says. Two of her students, including one who “hated to write,” scored 5.5 in writing on the last FCAT. Inwood gives them certificates that show their scores and encourages them to share them with their teachers when they return to their old schools. “I tell them it proves they can do it, that they are not a failure – they are a success!” she says.

Students use Inspiration to create graphic organizers illustrating the various aspects of different U.S. states, as in this one about North Carolina.

Crossroads is now ranked 16th in the state of Florida for writing and was recently recognized by the state for its gains. “Now every year we surpass our previous year’s achievements,” she says.

Inwood says she sees every day at Crossroads as an adventure, and while her days are never easy, when something good happens, she is grateful for the experience. “Kids come here feeling bad about themselves and leave here feeling good,” she says. “And Inspiration is a big part of their success.” themselves and leave here feeling good,” she says. “And Inspiration is a big part of their success.”

Incoming sixth-graders typically encounter a fair amount of anxiety about leaving the comforts of elementary school and entering the unchartered wilds of middle school. They’re leaving behind recess and a single classroom and teacher – and learning to navigate their way from class to class, use a locker and acclimate to a much larger social structure. However, at Hartford Memorial Middle School in White River Junction, VT, new sixth-graders are finding the transition is nearly painless, thanks to an innovative project.

Located in the picturesque Ottauquechee River Valley where Vermont borders New Hampshire, White River Junction is one of five “villages” in Hartford, a town of 10,200 residents. With three elementary schools, a middle school, a high school and a vocational school, Hartford School District serves 2,200 students.

Five years ago, the district’s educational technology specialist, John Minelli, and teacher Ray Hathorn developed a program in which a class of sixth-graders creates presentations revealing everything rising fifth-graders need to know about middle school. The goal is to minimize incoming students’ stress so they can succeed in their new setting right from the start, as well as to provide a monumental learning opportunity for the sixth-graders involved in the project.

The sixth-graders’ primary tool in planning and creating their presentations is Inspiration®, the essential tool to visualize, think, organize and learn. Inspiration provides powerful support for critical thinking, comprehension and writing in all curriculum areas.

“This project is way at the top of the list of the most memorable things our students have ever done at school,” said Minelli. “Everyone is busy and focused. They’re running a major transition activity, and it’s very exciting.”

Using Inspiration to navigate the challenges of middle school

Each year Minelli works with a teacher to lead a class of sixth-grade students through the project, and this year it is Tristan Kennedy, language arts and reading teacher. “We probably spend about 20 class periods to complete the project so it takes a teacher who’s really committed to it,” said Minelli.

On the first day of the school year, the sixth-graders develop graphic organizers using Inspiration, recording their fears, concerns, expectations and questions about middle school. “The reason we do this on the first day is that by four days into the school year, nothing makes them nervous anymore,” said Minelli. Students store their work in network folders until February, when they revisit it and begin to address what information would ease the transition for next year’s class.

“With this project, there is only one requirement,” explained Minelli. “They need to document everything in Inspiration, every step of the way. Inspiration is a core component of the entire project,” he said.

Planning and developing multimedia presentations

Armed with their data from the first day of school, Kennedy works with the class using Inspiration’s RapidFire® tool to brainstorm and map their combined data, creating a giant Inspiration graphic organizer on the whiteboard. The class then develops a list of project topics, breaking down the information into individual webs. Next, the students choose topics and divide into five groups of three to address the areas they will cover.

Typical topics include the principal and office staff, team teachers, discipline, what’s cool about middle school, and a day at middle school.

Once groups are set, “students are in complete charge of their own direction and outcome,” said Minelli. They use Inspiration to create concept maps for meeting group responsibilities and deadlines. They diagram and write interview questions, outline appointment times and determine the technology tools needed for each step.

The students are free to use the school’s digital audio recorders, cameras and a video recorder to incorporate interviews with teachers and students into their presentations. “It’s not often that a teacher will hand a 12- year-old a $500 video camera to use, but our students take great pride in this project, and nobody’s ever broken anything,” said Minelli.

Sixth-graders use Inspiration to brainstorm and capture the ideas they want to share with rising fifth-graders.

Using Inspiration to take the show on the road

After completing their work in Inspiration, students seamlessly transfer their work to a PowerPoint presentation. Near the end of the year, they take their “show on the road” to the elementary schools. Fifthgraders see digital photos of students, staff, places and things at the middle school, accompanied by audio of staff welcoming the incoming students and explaining their roles.

“The students are excited to tell the fifth-graders about all kinds of things – the dances, the snack bar, discipline, the loss of recess and the social aspects of middle school,” said Minelli.

In previous years, the transition was limited to a question-and-answer session at each elementary school and a brief tour of the middle school, conducted by guidance counselors. The fifth-graders are very receptive to the new student-directed approach, said Minelli. “They’re more relaxed and more apt to ask questions that they might not ask adults, such as what happens when you don’t do your homework.”

While the incoming middle school students are reaping the rewards of this project, so are the sixth-graders who participate in it, said Minelli. “There’s a huge level of satisfaction in creating a product they are really proud of.” In addition, this project teaches the sixth-graders problem-solving skills they will need down the road—in college and in the work force, he said.

Minelli said Hartford School District’s use of Inspiration extends far beyond the middle school transition project, and is particularly useful for the secondary students’ development of writing portfolios. “It is really seamless, and it’s the most intuitive product I have ever seen,” he said. “Inspiration is as easy as can be to use, and our students are accomplishing amazing things with it.”

"Inspiration 9 is familiar but improved. It takes information to a higher level, giving students the tools to analyze, synthesize and present their thoughts to others. It also helps linear learners create mind maps and visual learners create order. What a great way to bring different types of learners to shared understanding!"
Deb Logan
Librarian/Media Specialist
Mount Gilead Middle/High School
Mount Gilead, OH

"Inspiration 9 is more inclusive and powerful than previous versions. I'm very excited about this new version!"
Kay Ezzell
Technology Specialist
Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind
St. Augustine, FL

"The new Map View in Inspiration 9 is easy to use and understand. You don’t have to give up what you know about Inspiration diagrams and webs; this is an additional tool to view concepts and the relationships between them."
Adrianne Hunt
National Faculty
Lesley University
Cambridge, MA

"I like how I can move my ideas around quickly and use RapidFire® in Inspiration 9’s new Map View. The mind maps are great for brainstorming, organizing your ideas and showing the relationships between them."
Brian S Friedlander, Ph.D.
Assistive Technology Consultant
AssistiveTek, LLC
Port Murray, NJ

"Inspiration 9 is much more versatile; it lends itself to communication via the new Presentation Manager which allows students to design their presentations as a thoughtful process and then share it with others without having to create everything from scratch. I really liked its ease of use."
Pati Terry
Professor, Education Department
Virginia Wesleyan College
Norfolk, VA

"Inspiration is indispensable for technology planning at the district level; meanwhile, students use it for pre-writing, project planning and presentations. It is the best all-around tool in which a school district can invest."
Leslie Alles Flanders
Director of Technology
Scott County Schools
Georgetown, KY

"Inspiration's Transfer tool is an important feature that adds value for the end user and presents a number of possibilities for classroom implementation."
Bill Robertson, Ph.D.
Project Leader
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM

"Teaching history is not just a matter of getting students to memorize dates. I want them to have thorough understanding of what happened in the past and why. Inspiration is a great tool for that because it helps students organize their material in different ways."
Margo McAlear
History Teacher
Park Tudor School
Indianapolis, IN

"Inspiration has addressed the needs of a generation of visual learners. My students enjoy using the program to create visually appealing diagrams for projects and presentations."
Sally Stevens
Elementary Computer Support Specialist
Linden Academy of Science and Technology
Linden, NJ

"Inspiration is the one piece of software my district can’t live without. It has proven to be a valuable tool in fostering students’ critical and creative thinking skills."
John Blaser
Technology Integration Specialist
Eastchester Union Free School District
Eastchester, NY

"Inspiration is a dynamic program that allows students to incorporate new information at any time. With the hyperlinking and graphic capabilities of Inspiration, students can synthesize and present detailed diagrams to ‘show what I know,’ facilitating student creativity."
James Rye, Ph.D.
Community Curriculum Coordinator
Health Sciences and Technology Academy
West Virginia University,
Morgantown, WV

"Inspiration energizes my students to think, organize and create. It is a handy tool that helps students break barriers and leads them to success."
Marlene Goss, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor Dept. of
Professional and Secondary Ed
West Chester University, West Chester, PA

"Students are often very creative, but they can’t make their ideas form a logical pattern. By using Inspiration, it’s easy to brainstorm and then, with one click of a button, they have an outline for a story, an essay or a simple research paper. This difficult job is reduced to an enjoyable task that they can accomplish with minimal assistance."
Sandy Sherwood
K-6 Technology Teacher
Appleby Elementary School
Marathon, NY

"Inspiration is easy to work with, but challenges my students to think logically and helps them improve their problem solving skills. This program is a great tool for both my teacher education students and their students."
Dr. Scott Fredrickson
Professor and Graduate Program Chair
Instructional Technology
Department of Teacher Education, College of Education
University of Nebraska at Kearney