Inspiration and Web Resources

Inspiration is a software that allows teachers (and students) to organize and classify information in various forms (i.e. outline, tree, web) for easy comprehension, visibility, and readability.  I believe it would be worth the investment as there is no other comparable software on the market for the price. 

Here are ways that Inspiration can be used as productivity and instructional tools in the classroom:

1. Graphic organizer for students and teachers
2. Planning and constructing device for teachers when writing lesson plans and whole units
3. Content poster created by enlarging a concept map
4. Individual concept maps for the students to help them understand relationships between the words/phrases 
5. Introduction of a new concept
6. KWL chart used at beginning of a lesson/unit and at the end to show what the students have learned
7. Assessment (i.e. test or quiz): Give each student a concept map with some words/phrases included and others left blank to evaluate how much the students have learned about the interrationships between concepts
8. Group project: students creating their own concept maps using Inspiration to show what they have learned from a particular unit and the subsequent relationships between concepts
9. Study guide for students
10. Picture concept maps for special needs children
11. Tool of comparison between lessons/units
12. A sampling of specific elementary grades content-related examples that can be created with Inspiration:
• Food chain
• Digestive process
• Process of bill becoming a law
• Structures of government
• Water cycle

The uses of inspiration for teachers and students are endless!

Among my favorite web resources, I believe United Streaming; Ethemes; and Rubistar to be the most effective for my future classroom (although I will probably use all the web resources introduced in class at various intervals in my future classroom).  However, I want to focus primarily on these three.   

1. United Streaming:  This site is clearly massive in its content and resources that it provides for teachers to utilize in the classroom.  Apart from the thousands of educational videos/clips for all subject areas, many videos are also coupled with extensive instructional strategies, lesson plans, and worksheets.  I will use this site on a weekly basis (at the very minimum) to introduce lessons/units and to use as supplemental material as this type of technology will easily engage and motivate my students.  In addition, one can save and download clips as well as use the calendar to incorportate current holidays and historical events.  
2. Ethemes.missouri.edu: This is a resource site in which teachers can search alphabetically based on grade level.  As there are hundreds of themes and concepts listed under each grade level, this site will be beneficial to use in order to discover educational sites/resources pertaining to specific subjects.  For example, if I were teaching first graders about mammals and need information about Koalas, I may scroll to first grade; click on "Koalas;" and use the resources listed (i.e. Australia Koala Foundation, Kidsplanet, National Geographic, jigsaw puzzle, Koala Lou book, etc.).  This is a wonderful site to use when planning units as the resources are educational and engaging to use when teaching the content.  
3. Rubistar:  Lastly, although Rubistar is antiquated, it is worth utilizing to create assessment rubrics.  One can create one from scratch or use existing ones.  I have already created rubrics using Rubistar for my science and social studies units and will continue to do so on a daily/weekly basis when I begin teaching.