Reflection #9: Inspiration Software is Useful!

What?  A couple of weeks ago, we learned how to use the Kidspiration and Inspiration technologies in our class.  To be quite honest, I thought to myself, "This is alright.  It takes a while to get a hang of and the pictures are really fruity."  The one thing that I did really like and spent most of my time experimenting on was the bubble web maker.  I thought to myself, "If I do ever use Inspiration in my future classroom, it would be to make these charts for my own lesson planning as well as for students' personal planning."

So What?  Well, my opinion has shifted more to the positive side since I recently visited an elementary school Special Needs class just a few days ago!  I was observing a para-educator as she worked one-on-one with a student who struggled with autism.  He was translating his pre-write web onto a laptop to practice his writing skills.  I watched for a few minutes and decided to take a peek at his screen to see how he was doing on his web - and what did I find but the exact same chart that I was using in Inspiration!  So I asked, "What program is this?!"  The para-educator blithely responded, "Oh, it's called Inspiration...." upon which I responded, "Wow!  We just learned how to use this program!  So your kids use it?!"

Now What?  It turns out that this student had a hard time reading his own handwriting, thus he was retyping his notes into a more legible chart to help him come up with a story.  I was inspired to see Inspiration in use in such a practical way!  I was also surprised to note how proficient this student was in his web-making skills.  He was able to manage the chart more rapidly than I was in our Technology class, and he is in the 3rd grade.  I've learned a lesson this past week that I believe will help me as a teacher: don't judge a technology by first experimentation.  What seems silly or just alright to me, may be extremely useful to a struggling 3rd grader who can use all of the supplementation he can get!