I reviewed Inspiration specifically for the purposes of Language Arts (though it can be used for multiple content areas). It is a tool designed to help students express their thoughts in the form of concept maps, outlines, webs, side-by-side comparisons, and other charts. Students create visualizations of their ideas and information as they go through the process of brainstorming, organizing, outlining, and drafting. They use arrows, pictures, words, links, shapes, and text boxes which quickly switch to a written outline with just one click.
Inspiration can be used to create book comparisons, vocabulary webs, character analysis, and other pre-writing tools to help students plan out a variety of Language Arts projects. I think this is a great tool to help students organize their thoughts before writing out their actual assigment. It is essential that students have a plan so that their papers flow smoothly and stay focused.
A video overview of Inspiration is available online and tutorials can be seen as soon as the free trial is downloaded. There are also teacher webcasts and curriculum applications available under Inspiration Videos.
Other teachers have used this resource to create lesson plans, such as this one on writing persuasive papers. There are also entire lesson plan books available to purchase through the website.
Inspiration is an open-ended tool that helps student interact with the content of their language arts (and other subjects) projects and achieve their planning and pre-writing goals.
