Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Week 4 Assignment

For this week I went on the quick tour of the Inspiration website. I found that the Inspiration software can make organizing thoughts for a paper easier. I found it interesting in that it will automatically create an outline for you just by the click of a button. I would only be able to use the Inspiration software if the school district had it and if my students are able to use the computers at school. But if those two criteria are met, then I would love to use this software. I think for the student, it can be fun and they are actually learning at the same time.

Writing assignments where the student is able to organize they thoughts would be best. Because the hardest part of writing a paper is the organizing of thoughts in a way that makes sense. so with that in mind, I would utilize the concept maps because in effect the student is brainstorming and seeing how theirs ideas relate to one another. Then they can use what's in the model to put their paper together. The students can help each other by bouncing ideas off each other. They can also use the databases to find additional information or contribute to each others work.

Trudy Paul

5 comments:

littlejohn said...

I completely agree that if the district is prepared for technology in the classroom that inspiration is awesome. I think it will lead to much better thought out papers, and gives the student confidence when trying to piece a big paper together.

Chris said...

Trudy,
I also like the brainstorming aspect of inspiration and how it automatically puts those ideas into an outline format. How cool!

Chris #4

kklutts1981 said...

I like the thought of having it available to students as a way to brainstorm their ideas. If the software is not used by the district maybe you could suggest that they take an Inpiration "Quick Tour".

jennkenn said...

i can see where you are coming from! But I would use this website as much as I can!

piggym_55 said...

Trudy, I agree. I believe that gathering and organizing thoughts are the most important and hardest things for people to do when writing.