EDU 313: Inspiration/Kidspiration

Hi and welcome to our week on Kidspiration and Inspiration. We're going to take a look at these two products and how they can help you create a graphical organizer or sometimes they're called a concept map. You may see other terms associated with this but the idea behind these two products is that they help you to arrange your content in a very graphically visually appealing way for your students. This really gets to those visual learners. So with the help of these programs you can take your content and help it to be rearranged in a way that will show links and relationships between things all with a graphical centered focus. I think you guys will like these products. This whole idea is something different than we've looked at through the semester so far.

So we're going to take a look at two different products inspiration and Kidspiration. These are both made by the same company and the difference is Kidspiration is typically geared towards kindergarten through fifth grade and Inspiration for older kids. But I think you could certainly use inspiration with the younger kids as well. And once you watch the demos of these you'll understand the differences between them.

So for this week you guys are going to watch a demo for each of these products as well as a tutorial from me walking you through inspiration. I'm going to take, of the two products, I'm going to show you Inspiration but once you get the hang of that you'll understand how Kidspiration works as well. So I would encourage you to download the Inspiration trial version and as you're watching the tutorial have that up next to you and follow along with me so you can learn that ins and outs of the product. And I would encourage you as you watch and participate with these tutorials you think about your own content and how some of the things that you'll be teaching might fit into this format. Again the idea behind this product or these products is that you are taking your content and making it into a very graphically visually appealing resource for students. So go ahead and get started learning about Inspiration and Kidspiration.