Version 5.0, just released, is designed to meet their needs. Inspiration users pull from a palette of more than 500 symbols, linking shapes with lines and arrows in whatever pattern best suits their plans. A dozen templates model possible educational applications. It is a thinking tool for adults as well as children, and it offers skills to take from classroom to career. Every day, I watch as students struggle to develop topics for research, understand the information they are reading, organize that information to solve a problem, or communicate their knowledge to their teachers or fellow students.
Some students find it easy to plan by preparing a formal outline.
Others need to draw some pictures that organize ideas and illustrate relationships, comparisons and sequences. When faced with a blank sheet or a white computer screen and a bunch of printouts, many students just don't have a clue what to do next. They'll highlight, cut and paste or take some notes. But it is the rare student who will independently reorganize information and go beyond retelling. For many students, the same problem occurs in their reading.