Congratulations on a most useful teaching aid. They can visually demonstrate to themselves that they are learning and making progress in transferring what they take into and what they put out in their own writing. I asked the teachers to load Inspiration onto laptops. After a seven-minute demonstration on webbing, they broke into groups of three, then took one topic in the web and expanded what they wanted to learn. In my history classes, I want my students to achieve a thorough understanding of what happened in the past and why.
Inspiration is a great tool for that, because it helps students organize material in different ways.
I find this very helpful with my students in Spanish because they struggle to express themselves in another language, and webbing gives them an anchor to begin expressing themselves. In fact, I told the teachers at my school that if I were a classroom teacher and could have only one program on my computer, I would want it to be Inspiration. That's why I have my students create concept maps with Inspiration. Inspiration makes students investigate a concept for themselves, and helps them understand what that concept really means. Paul Rutherford, science teacher Shawnee Mission, KS Students benefit from having a tool for planning and developing a wide range of projects and activities.