Inspiration Maps for the iPad- Simply Brilliant!

If you follow my blog then you know that just how important using mind mapping and graphic organizers is to me. I can remember seeing a demo of Inspiration 2.0 for the first time at an educational technology conference some time ago, and when I watched the view change from graphic organizer to outline view with a click of the mouse if was a real epiphany. From time on I was a changed man, and have been using Inspiration ever since, in the work that I do with students with learning disabilities. It is always really exciting for me to work with teachers and watch them as I demonstrate how to use Inspiration in the classroom. As soon as I teach them the basics you could see the lights go on as they are thinking of all the ways they could use it in the classroom. As schools begin to transition to a "post PC" world it was great that late last spring that Inspiration announced the release of Inspiration Maps for the iPad. Inspiration Maps brings the best of what Inspiration has to offer to the iPad with an extremely easy to use interface. Using Inspiration Maps day in and day out with students, I am always amazed how quickly they catch on and can jump right into the program. The folks at Inspiration did a wonderful job of translating their excellent program to the iPad without sacrificing what the program does best.

When you first open Inspiration Maps you are greeted with a Starter screen that lets you pick a graphic organizer from an assortment of templates that gets you into the process very quickly. Users of Inspiration will find many of their favorite templates still available on the iPad that are ideal of Social Studies, English, and Science. Many of the students that I work with find the touch interface to be easy to navigate and within minutes feel very comfortable using the program. Once students are introduced to RapidFire, it is incredible to see how quickly they can use Inspiration Maps as a brainstorming tool or for a pre-writing. Adding sentences to the Note card is a great way for students to get their ideas down. Showing students how to flip to the Outline View is always so much fun, and to watch the expressions on their faces is priceless. Having the the ability to have students move, organize and sequence their ideas in the Outline view is incredibly powerful as they write.

Of all the features the one that students really enjoy taking advantage of is bring in pictures from the camera and Camera Roll. Unlike Inspiration for the computer, Inspiration Maps does not ship with a library of pictures so in order to make your maps more visual, you can bring in pictures from your iPad to personalize your work. One tip that I learned awhile ago is that it is easy to copy pictures from Google Images into your Camera Roll, by simply holding your finger down on an image until the dialog pops up to that says Save Photo. Once you do that you will find the picture in the Camera Roll that can then be used with Inspiration Maps. If you know it advance that your students will be working a particular project and will need some specific pictures you can load them ahead of time using Google images so that your students can then simply select them from the camera Roll.

Sharing your Inspiration Maps is really easy and the program gives you lots of ways to do this. You can open up the maps in other programs when you are done which is a good option when you want to continue the writing process. I often have students send their Inspiration Maps outline to Pages which works really well. Inspiration Maps supports emailing your maps as an Inspiration Maps document or a PDF and from the Outline view it supports emailing the outline as text. Inspiration has done an excellent job of integrating Dropbox into the app which makes it easy to integrate it with your workflow if you are using Inspiration on a Mac or PC. By upgrading your desktop version of Inspiration to version 9.1, the latest build you can access your Inspiration Maps from your Dropbox account and continue working on it. Likewise, you can Export your Inspiration maps from your Mac or PC and open them with Inspiration Maps on your iPad.

Overall, you will find Inspiration Maps a joy to use and one that will benefit your students as they write, brainstorm, or think through academic content. The interface is very intuitive and the developers really devised the program and took into account the fact that the students would be interacting through touch. To this end Inspiration has accomplished a lot in providing educators with a robust and wonderful program to use in the classroom. So for me the tradition continues, as more and more of the students that I work with move to the iPad, is great to be able to recommend a program that I have relied upon for my entire career and that is Inspiration. Inspiration has a Lite version that you can trial for free which is well worth it-but once you begin to use it and see the value, you will want to upgrade to the full version which gives you great templates and better exporting features.

Tip: If you have Speak Selection turned on in Accessibility, your students can select any text in Inspiration Maps and have the iPad read it to them using the built-in  text to speech.

Using WebspirationPRO for Brainstorming Ideas

I recently started using WebspirationPRO, which is a software as service application from Inspiration which allows me to brainstorm and think visually in the cloud. As  along time Inspiration user, I feel right at home using WebspirationPRO since many of the conventions used are those that can be found on the desktop version. To this day, RapidFire remains one of my favorite tools when I am brainstorming- it is easy to use and very efficient when you want to get your ideas down. WebspirationPRO supports RapidFire and within minutes my ideas were literally shooting out around my central idea. While WebspirationPRO has a nice library of pictures and clip art it does allow you to bring in your own graphics which was easy and straightforward to do. When it is time to share my visual map I was able to use the Sharing feature and publish it to the web with a unique URL. Once you publish your visual map you can also capture the embedding code that is handy to paste into blogs and wikis making it easy to share. You can see visual organizer above.

Once you start using WebspirationPRO you will swear that it feels just like a desktop application until you realize that you can now access your files from any computer connected to the internet that has a browser, and that is what makes this application really stand out. Having access to my files from any computer is the new law of the land for me. The more I work with the computers - the more I want my files available 24/7 to me from anywhere I am connected. In this sense applications like WebspirationPRO become even more important to me- now if it only worked on the iPad. But yes, I know it is on the road map!

PS: Coming Soon - information about a 1 day iPad Summer Institute to be held in New Jersey

Inspiration Launches Webspiration Pro

It was really exciting to learn about the launch of Webspiration Pro from Inspiration, which is geared for business professionals and college students. Launched as software as a service all you need is a browser an a account to get started to access this feature rich tool for visual thinking. Webspiration Pro is sold as a subscription and if you act now you can get some really great deals on the pricing. Webspiration is ideal for brainstorming and collaborating with colleagues when working on shared projects. Using Webspiration it is easy to invite, comment,  chat with collaborators as you are working on your ideas. You will find Webspiration to be easy and intuitive to use with the right mix of features. I have always enjoyed using Inspiration on the desktop and now with the release of Webspiration it affords the capability to share my ideas and collaborate across time zones. When I'm ready, I can publish my maps to my blog or web site with the provided URL and embed code. So if you have the chance take the time to look at the release of Webspiration Pro. There is a free 30 day Trial - so get started and let me know what you think? And by the way, Inspiration is working on an iPad App for Webspiration which should be pretty cool! More to come.

Kidspiration 3 Workshop

This past Friday I spent the entire day working with elementary school teachers in New Jersey showing them how to use Kidspiration 3 in the classroom. Within a two hour period all of the teachers were introduced to the Picture, Writing, and Math View. The teachers were quick to learn how to use the program and the intuitive interface found in Kidpsiration 3 which really helped them along. With the addition of the Word Guide and the Math manipulatives, Kidspiration 3 is clearly an essential piece of software for the elementary school classroom. Many of the teachers were excited to explore the Activities and Online Lessons to get more ideas on how this tool could be used in their classroom. With the text to speech support and the graphic representation of information Kidspiration 3 is an ideal tool for students whose learning preference is visual. Kidspiration 3 is also ideal for use with interactive whiteboards- and remember if you are working with young children you can move the tools to the bottom of the screen. Many of the teachers were really excited with the possibilities and thoroughly enjoyed using the Math tools that are now built into Kidspiration 3. If you have not taken a look at Kidspiration 3 in awhile, I would urge you to take a look at it and download the Trial version that is available from the Inspiration web site.

Inspiration 9 Coming January 2010

Inspiration 8 continues to be on my top 10 all time list of software applications and every time I use it or run a workshop showing teachers how they can support students I am always amazed at the built in features and templates. Just yesterday, I did an in-service program on using Inspiration 8 and Webspiration and I showed a group of Middle School teachers how they can integrate graphic organizers in their classroom's with students. Some of the features which really shine are: Text to Speech, WordGuide, Templates, and the Transfer to Word. On the heels of this I was excited to see that Inspiration 9 will be released in January 2010.

Here is what Inspiration Software is saying about Inspiration 9:

Comprehend. Create. Communicate. Achieve More

For visual mapping, outlining, writing and making presentations, use Inspiration® 9, the ultimate thinking and learning tool. Brainstorm ideas, structure your thoughts and visually communicate concepts to strengthen understanding with the Diagram and Map Views. To take notes, organize information, and structure writing for plans, papers and reports, use the integrated Outline View to focus on main and supporting ideas and to clarify thinking in written form. With Inspiration's Presentation Manager, transform your diagrams, mind maps and outlines into polished presentations that communicate ideas clearly and demonstrate understanding and knowledge.

For more information go to Inspiration Software website.

Today's Webspiration Training

Today I was called into a Middle School to do some training with teachers on Inspiration to help support a student with writing and reading comprehension difficulties. Last year I had done a comprehensive assistive technology evaluation and had made the recommendation to the Child Study Team that the student would benefit greatly from using Inspiration on a computer as a pre-writing strategy and to help him to better understand and retain information. When I went into the school today I decided to take a little different tact and worked with the teachers on getting them comfortable with Webspiration. Since all of the teachers did not have Inspiration installed on thier laptops I figured why not try Webspiration a tool that they could use not only with this student but with the entire class. There are lots of advantages to using Webspiration if you are teacher, most notably, you can access your graphic organizers from any computer connected to the internet and you can jointly share your webs and templates with others.

During this short session we were able to create a graphic organizer on the "scientific method" as well as add graphics from the library. We also had a chance to add notes and to look at some of the templates that come with Webspiration. The "aha" moment didn't come until I showed them how they could share their files with others. Within minutes teachers were collaborating with one another and could see just how easy it was for them to share their graphic organizers with the identified student who would need this to support his learning. It was a rell eye opener for them to also learn that the student could then access these files and open them with Inspiraiton 8 which he has installed on his laptop computer.

I had a chance to work directly with the student and showed him how to access these shared files that some of his teachers had shared with him in Webspiration. He quickly grasped how to use Webspiration and was taught how to download the files he needed so that he could use some of the other supports that were only found in Inspiration 8, Text to Speech, and the Word Guide. Using the Listen Tool the student was able to click on any symbol on the screen to hear the text being read. Likewise I also showed him how to turn on the Talking Interface which would then allow him to have the computer read the definitions in the Word Guide.

Having the ability of the teachers and the student to have access to Webspiration really was very empowering. I will be going back to the district in a couple of weeks to do a follow training to see how everything is going. In the interim please take a look at Webspiration and see how you can begin to use it with the students that you work with.

Webspiration Updated!

I have been a big fan of Webspiration and it is always exciting for me to hear about the latest changes and updates to the application. Here is a recent email that I received about some new features which I'm sure you will want to try out.

The newest Webspiration updates include the ability to easily create personal templates, to distribute copies of documents to other Webspiration users and to set up collaboration groups.

Personal Templates

Now you can create your own personal templates. This is especially useful for documents you use on a regular basis, such as weekly project notes or monthly reports. Learn more.







Distribute copies of your documents to other users

The Distribute copies option allows you to provide other users with their own copy of an existing document. This is especially useful if you have created a document as a starter for a group, but you want each individual in that group to be responsible for completing the work. Learn more.

Collaboration Groups

Creating Collaboration Groups makes inviting users with whom you regularly collaborate fast and easy. Once a group is set up, you can invite all of its members at once to view or collaborate on a document. Learn more.














Check out the newly redesigned myWebspiration.com website!

In addition to updating our look, we have added several tools to help you use Webspiration to think visually and get organized:

• Visit our new Examples Gallery to find and share Webspiration examples with your peers
• Browse our Tips & Tricks section to find ideas that will help you focus your projects and jumpstart your work
• Or, find answers to your questions in our newly redesigned Help Center.

We are always looking for your feedback. Please send us an email with suggestions of what you'd like to see.

Thank you for your continued support and use of Webspiration,
The Webspiration Team

Webspiration has been Updated!

Just wanted to let you know that I received an email today from Inspiration, Inc., that a host of new features have been added to Webspiration. I wanted you to be the first on the block to hear about this. Some of the new updates to Webspiration include:

• Insert your own graphics to your Webspiration diagrams or outlines
• A new Starter screen which gives you easier access to your documents
• New button on the Starter screen to access templates and Examples
• Improved Chat features

Visit http://www.mywebspiration.com/blog/updates-launched to learn more. One of the most asked for features the ability to add you own graphics to your mind map has been added. I for one have sked for this feature for awhile now and am glad to know that it was included in this update. I have tied this feature this morning and am glad to tell you it worked great. I found it very intuitive and easy to use. You will see in my mind map that each of my symbols now has a customized picture. This is a huge feature and one that I know that you will enjoy. Another key feature of Webspiration is the ability to embed or publish your mind maps to the web. To view the mind map that I created with Webspiration click here. Webspiration makes it very easy to share your mind maps over the web and the new Chat features will make it even easier to communicate while collaborating. I would be interested in how you are using Webspiration in the work that you do? So please feel free to comment! To sign up for a free Webspration account click on the link.

It Doesn't Get Any Easier than with Inspiration 8

I have used many mind and concept mapping applications in the last couple of years and it is always refreshing to revisit Inspiration, where I first learned about the power of visual thinking. I'm not sure what version of Inspiration I initially worked with but it was probably version 2 or 3. When I first saw a demonstration of Inspiration it was an epiphany for me. The light bulb turned on and I never looked back. You see for me, when I am thinking about organizing my ideas, or working on a new project one of the first tools that I look for is Inspiration 8.

Inspiration 8 is easy to use and all the tools you need are there in front of you. Over the years more features have been added but the program has always been true to its mission allowing the user to think visually about the topic at hand. You see for me, the true test of a software application is that it fades into the background and doesn't interfere with the work at hand. In this respect Inspiration 8 with its powerful RapidFire feature makes brainstorming and getting your ideas out on the page easy and elegant. For the the visual thinkers the Library of pictures adds to the appeal of the program but the same can be said for the linear thinkers who have access to a powerful outlining tool with the click of a button.

Today I had the opportunity to work with a student with a learning disability and I asked him if he had been using Inspiration as I had recommended to his teachers. The student said that he had been using it and when I put Inspiration 8 in front of him he quickly created a map of his favorite activities. Within minutes he had mapped out his favorite activities and if we had more time he would have been able to add note cards and transfer the information to Microsoft Word. I had a chance to speak to this student's Language Arts teacher and she reinforced how important it was for this student to use graphic organizers in the writing process. She shared that for this student, being able to visually see his ideas and the connections was an important and essential part of the writing process for him.

As we all work with students to develop their skills, it is important to give them life long tools that they can use even after they finish their formal education. I for one am a big proponent of teaching all students how to use visual thinking and mind mapping skills-which are essential in helping students to think, create and present information in a graphical way. As the amount of information expands exponentially the ability to use tools like Inspiration 8 to help students organize and visualize information will become more important and certainly one of my priorities as a 21st Century skill set.

On the Road with the Acer Aspire One

I'm on the road today and stopped into a Panera's to have some coffee and use their free wifi on my recently purchased Acer Aspire One. Many of the schools and students that I am working with have been asking me about these netbooks and I thought that it was time to invest in one so that I could try it out and use it with some of the students that I'm presently working with. When I saw the Acer Aspire One on sale at Staples for $299 dollars I knew it was time to jump in. The 2.2 pound Acer Aspire One has worked famously and while the keyboard is a little smaller than the typical laptop keyboard it is fine for some light typing. In fact I'm blogging from my Acer Aspire One right now without any difficulty. I typically have the screen zoomed in so that it is easier for me to see te text. By putting two fingers on the trackpad and gesturing towards the side of the computer you can easily zoom in which makes it a lot easier for me to see the text. For younger students with smaller hands and better eyesight the screen and keyboard should not be an obstacle.

I have installed some of my favorite applications on the Acer Aspire One, which has a a 160 Gb hard disk drive running the Intel Atom processor with 1 GB of RAM. The Acer Aspire One runs surprising well and is very responsive even running larger applications like Microsoft Office 2007 and MindManager 8. Having used the Acer Aspire One for the past couple of weeks I has lead me to believe that this could be an ideal assistive technology tool for students with writing disabilities. I have used the Acer Aspire One with a couple of students who have used Inspriation 8 in the writing process and it worked like a charm complete with text to speech. Transferring the student's work to Microsoft Word from Inspiration was very fast. I was also able to install NaturalReader the free text to speech application which worked well right within Microsoft Word. All told I have been really happy with the Acer Aspire One and look forward to seeing how other will benefit from this technology. At just 2.2 pounds and a battery life of around 2.5 hours this could be a great assistive technology tool.

Webspiration Updated

One of the first visual mapping tools that I worked with many years ago was Inspiration and the first time I encountered it, it was a real epiphany for me. I could not believe how you could go from the diagram view to the outline view with a simple click of the mouse. But more importantly Inspiration always allowed me the capability to brainstorm and get my ideas down in a way that was more consistent with my learning style and I have been using visual mapping tools ever since. To this day, Inspiration remains one of my favorite tools for brainstorming and concept mapping and now with the introduction of Webspiration it has expanded the utility of the tool for me.

Just this morning I learned that Webspiration will now allow you to publish your visual maps to a public area on the web with a click of the mouse and give you the embedded code to place your maps on your blog. When you log onto your account you will now be taken to the Document Manager which enables you to quickly view your documents. Here is a screen shot to the left of how to publish your visual maps.





Here is the embeded visual map from my Webspiration account:

just click on the map to zoom in and move around.

New Features in Webspiration

Here are some updates to Webspiration which I have previously written about. Webspiration is really maturing and is a wonderful online tool for visual thinkers. As a long time Inspiration user I am really excited by this version which is accessible to me anytime I am connected to the web. If you haven't taken the time-please do so you, will be very pleased with the features and the collaboration tools that are built-in to this application.

Learning Library

Inside the Launch Center we've built a learning library with helpful articles to strengthen your visual thinking skills. College users will find some great tips on how to write papers with the least pain possible, or how to use Webspiration to study more effectively. Business users can learn the essentials of brainstorming, read some quick tips for creating diagrams, or learn how outlining can streamline your business writing.

Help Center

Our new expanded Help Center is designed to get your questions answered quickly and provide access to the information you need to use Webspiration's functions to their fullest.

The new Frequently Asked Questions section answers the most common questions we get from users, and is a great place to start if you need some help. Also in the Help Center is the Getting Started Guide, which gives you a comprehensive overview of Webspiration.

And, of course, the Help Center provides you access to our friendly Webspiration Technical Support team, in case you need help with anything that wasn't covered in the FAQ's or Getting Started Guide.

Sample Gallery

Seeing how other people are using Webspiration can sometimes trigger some great ideas of your own. The new sample gallery has samples of many different uses for visual thinking, whether it's mapping out processes, organizing papers, or laying out web sites.

The Joy of Teaching

There is no better feeling when you are teaching to see your students in perfect sync with you as the lesson or demonstration unfolds. In many ways it almost feels like a symphony of sorts- there I am teaching and I can watch the expression and the heads moving in unison as they grasp the ideas that I am espousing. Pretty powerful stuff to say the least. Today was one of those days where everything just flowed. I have been introducing my students to the power of videoconferencing and challenging them to think of some ways to use it in the classroom. In this vein, I introduced them to two of my favorite videoconferencing applications Skype and Oovoo.

For the first part of the class, I connected with my friend Laura at Inspiration, Inc. and my class had a chance to meet her via videoconferencing. We had a very good connection and the class marveled in just how easy it was to accomplish the connection. After Laura introduced herself, we connected via Glance so that we could share her screen. Laura and I have done this before with some other classes but it was the first time we were using Glance to share her screen. Using the latest version of Glance and my account I was able to Start a session and view Laura's screen. As I have noted one of the things that I like most about Glance is just how easy it is to use. Today was a perfect example- within seconds of starting the session, Laura's screen was up and my class was viewing her computer. Laura did a great job of demonstrating InspireData which continues to impress me. Just this past week I modeled for a fifth grade teacher how to set up a mock election by using the eSurvey feature within InspireData. Glance was really fast and the screen redraws were nearly instantaneous. It was a great session and Glance worked flawlessly. My students were very excited to participate in the webinar and began to see just how these tools could be used together to deliver professional development and instruction.

After the short webinar- I had a chance to show them OoVoo and connected with Philip Robertson from OoVoo. We had a great conversation and the students remarked on the clarity of the image and the quality of the audio. We also had a chance to record the session which is another benefit of OoVoo and I had a chance to replay it for them. The session was a big hit and once again Philip came through and provided some great information and his great sense of humor. In in all it was a great day of teaching!

Webspiration to Go Beta This Week

It is with a great deal of excitement that I announce that Inspiration will be releasing in a public beta Webspiration, their online visual thinking tool. (Webspiration will be available to the public this Wednesday for a free sign-up). I have had the privilege to work with Webspiration for the the last couple of months and have to say it was a truly wonderful experience. Inspiration, Inc has been able to take that same experience you have had when using the software on your desktop and translate it to that same experience within the browser. You will feel right at home once you log into Webspiration and all the familiar icons still adorn the web application. The major difference between the desktop application and Webspiration is that you are now able to invite others via an email to collaborate with you on your visual web. This is a very unique feature and one that will go a long way in the classroom, as you build collaborative activities. You will be glad to learn that you can upload your existing Inspiration graphic organizers to the web as well as download the ones you create from within Webspiration. Overall, Webspiration gives you all the power of the desktop version with the added benefits of collaboration, and being able to access your visual maps from any computer connected to the web. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

bCisive for Decision Making

Many of you may not know this about me, but in my previous life, I was a practicing school psychologist and worked with many students to help them develop better social problem solving and decision making skills. I even went on to write two parenting books on emotional intelligence and have been interested in this area for the better part of my professional career. As a practitioner, I would carefully break down the skills that the students needed to learn and I would often help them see the consequences for their actions by using flow charts or doing it them in Inspiration, a really fantastic concept mapping application. Trying to make the handouts and materials very visual and showing the students I worked with the decision making process was in the long run going to help them make better decisions.

The idea of visualizing the outcomes is very powerful and if I had some of the tools that I now have I know my work would have been that much easier. Regardless if you are a student or a business person we are always confronted with having to make literally hundreds of decisions each and everyday. Some of the decisions we make are made effortlessly without much deliberation, however there are always those few decisions that gnaw at us and force us to sit down, ponder, and evaluate. It is for the former, that having visual tools like bCisive can come in really handy. Before I talk about bCisive, I do want to thank Katherine Brandenberger from Austhink Software for providing me with a copy of bCisive, to review. Austhink Software promotes bCisive as a simple software application for business decision making and diagramming that goes beyond mind mapping. bCisive runs on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 2000.

bCisive has a very clean and pleasing interface to navigate and provides the user with the now familiar Ribbon interface. The Left panel provides the user with all of the symbols that can be used to build your decision tree, while the right panel provides you with the Text Panel. The Text Panel allows you to do Internet searches right within the application using Google and Wikipedia as well as searching for images using Flickr and Google. You can also use the Text Panel as a Scratch pad for your ideas or use it to attach Notes to an idea in your decision tree. Within the Text Panel you can also view a Summary of your decision making as well as an outline- which are two really powerful features. The user can also export the outline into a word processor for further editing or revision.

I decided to do a test run of bCisive working through a decision to take traditional courses or on-line courses for a Supervisor's Certificate. I started out building my decision tree by using the Basic Map template provided and dragging it into the middle of the screen. This provided me with a number of specific icons that I could now enter text into. I was now able to type my question as well as my options and the pro's and con's of each option. This was very straight forward and having the visuals laid out on the screen does make you go through the process more systematically documenting your thoughts and ideas. Once I worked through the process I was able to select my decision and code it using the decision icon. The process was very quick and straight forward. If I needed to have supporting materials, I could have attached files and URL links to my decision tree.

bCisive really shines when you are ready to share your decision processes with others. You can always Export your Outline to a text file to email to others or output your decision tree as an Image file (png, jpeg, bmp, tiff, and emf, and gif). One of the really exciting output features is being able to export your bCisive decision tree as a bMap Bundle. The bMap Bundle creates a zip file with all of your attachments and URL's and creates an html file with all accompanying media so that you can upload it to the web (Click here to view the bCisive map on the web) or share it with anyone who has access to a browser. Once you open up the bMap Bundle you can interact with your decision tree and look at the steps and process you took in coming to your decision. bCisive is a very specialized tool for all types of open ended decision making. It provides a very engaging environment in which to think about and clarify the options as well as the pro's and con's of your decisions in a very systematic fashion. I particularly liked the fact that the program automatically generated a summary of your decision. While I know this program is geared for business people, this could be an extremely invaluable tool for those professionals who work with students to help them look more carefully at the decisions they make and the consequences of their actions. Providing individuals with a structured visual approach to making better decisions is such and important support when students are in the process of having to decide on what to do. So if you have the chance, take a look at bCisive- there is a 30 day trial version available.