There's a 30-day trial on the Inspiration website so towards the end of term so I might download it and watch the supplied "Learn to use" training videos for ideas to use with a class.
Concept Maps
Inspiration looks like a great tool for things like family trees and food webs, and could be used as an activity in a literacy program to discuss plot, character and setting. The picture to the left is a concept map.
Greg outlined a great task of giving kids a shopping list, and getting them to group items according to where they are in the supermarket. Even a basic sorting activity could be made more interesting using this software. In a literacy activity you could get the students to sort characters into families, or age groups.
Mind Maps
These are a similar sort of arrangement actually but with different graphics. I think the main difference is that on a concept map you can interlink, however on the Mind Map example at the right you couldn't link an orange item with a green one.
With a mind map you could use colours consistently, eg green for environmental concerns and whatever other colours the children want to assign. In this way it could easily provide a visual basis for thinking about new topics.
The mind map feature would be useful for creating a dichotomous key in Level 4 - even making a classroom "Guess Who" game. I actually think it would be a great tool for creating "Choose Your Own Adventure books" - the students could list the flow of events, create a page for each one and mix up the order in the book.
You could make probability diagrams easily with a mind map. It could also be a way of creating fixtures for sporting tournaments like tennis. It's a pity the Australian Open is in the school holidays because that would be a great relevant topic - unfortunately by the time the children come back to school everyone's over the tennis! For a French LOTE class you could do this during the French Open and even integrate it with tennis skills in PE! All from one mind map.
Classroom Practicalities
One important note from today was not to teach children all the features of software at once - give them a 10-minute overview and then set them free to play. I know I learned far more by playing than I would have by watching someone click around a screen. Everyone's brain is wired differently and different features spark interest at different times. If those sparks aren't kindled then ICT could become an unwelcome chore for children.
The children would be able to come up with tons of uses for this software that I haven't thought of. I'm looking forward to finding out how kids think by watching what they do with the pictures and what connections they make.
Concept Maps
Inspiration looks like a great tool for things like family trees and food webs, and could be used as an activity in a literacy program to discuss plot, character and setting. The picture to the left is a concept map.
Greg outlined a great task of giving kids a shopping list, and getting them to group items according to where they are in the supermarket. Even a basic sorting activity could be made more interesting using this software. In a literacy activity you could get the students to sort characters into families, or age groups.
Mind Maps
With a mind map you could use colours consistently, eg green for environmental concerns and whatever other colours the children want to assign. In this way it could easily provide a visual basis for thinking about new topics.
The mind map feature would be useful for creating a dichotomous key in Level 4 - even making a classroom "Guess Who" game. I actually think it would be a great tool for creating "Choose Your Own Adventure books" - the students could list the flow of events, create a page for each one and mix up the order in the book.
You could make probability diagrams easily with a mind map. It could also be a way of creating fixtures for sporting tournaments like tennis. It's a pity the Australian Open is in the school holidays because that would be a great relevant topic - unfortunately by the time the children come back to school everyone's over the tennis! For a French LOTE class you could do this during the French Open and even integrate it with tennis skills in PE! All from one mind map.
Classroom Practicalities
One important note from today was not to teach children all the features of software at once - give them a 10-minute overview and then set them free to play. I know I learned far more by playing than I would have by watching someone click around a screen. Everyone's brain is wired differently and different features spark interest at different times. If those sparks aren't kindled then ICT could become an unwelcome chore for children.
The children would be able to come up with tons of uses for this software that I haven't thought of. I'm looking forward to finding out how kids think by watching what they do with the pictures and what connections they make.
This week's lecture
To be honest, I took very little away from today's lecture. I already have a very high level of ICT knowledge so today's introduction didn't fill any gaps. This subject should have been run at the start of the course, as I have already gone and looked for many resources for schools on my own. Bringing this in at the end, for me, is not adding much to my knowledge bank.
However, next week's discussion on ePortfolios will be interesting as it's time to start putting together job applications. I figure the more strings in my bow, the better. I'm also excited to find out about some more things I was unaware of, like Inspiration.
