WEEK 1 Introduction to Inspiration & the Development of a BLOG

   Graphic  design  organiser have been used in primary schools to help students rather than the traditional copy from a book.  Today we looked at   one of those graphic organisers "Inspiration" software  and developed a concept map.    The whole idea  was to help children to learn how to learn to link concepts.  We had   time to play around  and learn how to use the system. This will also be important to apply in the classroom to allow children  to have a play time and learn how to use inspiration.

   For me  this was a system I needed some time to get to use.  Inspiration  allows children to develop a concept map and thus  learn to create  a mind map.  It can be very versatile  with  the various  graphics. For example, under every  graph  there is  a text  blog  where children can write  material into this.  It is better in this case to type into the note function  rather than the comment  getting bigger  and bigger.  What  this is trying to do is not only get children  be stimulated by the  environment  but learn to make  connections  between  the story and  for example what the moral issues of the story are. You could do this in an English class for example where students learn to recognise relationship between characters and objects.  An aspect of this program is called transfer . It places  everything  a child  made  into one document.  It lists all the typing you put into it. This way kids can take their work away.  This program is good for family history, life cycles etc. we can set tasks for children about  famous structures  and they will need to find out more about them. In prep for example they might be able to  bring pictures in  of themselves  and do a family tree.   

   Running a mind  map allows you to put in a central idea  and  will link various ideas into the branches and discuss them.  It allows you to arrange work around a  central key point and encourage new ways of thinking. At this stage I am unclear of what is expected of me in this subject and I am  a bit anxious as a mature age student.  However, I did find inspiration and mind mapping to be engaging programs and can see myself applying it in my future classroom. I found adding hyperlinks and using the note functions very useful  as it allowed information to  be organised easily