20 May, 2009
Visual thinking online – Webspiration
Posted by: mberner In: Thinking Organisers| Uncategorized
Webspiration
ICT for Visualising thinking is part of VELS curriculum planning in Victoria.
ICT tools that facilitate visual thinking are ones that allow ideas and information for all areas of learning to be easily and quickly drafted , filtered, reorganised, refined and systematically assessed in order to make meaning for students. Students use text and image representations, such as graphic organisers, ICT-generated simulations and models to help structure their thinking processes and assist in constructing knowledge.
Inspiration is one such tool which allows students build graphic organizers, including concept maps, webs and idea maps to plan and organise, research and evaluate, comprehend and communicate. There are Inspiration trainer resources to give you ideas on how to use Inspiration in the classroom. Inspiration is often loaded onto school networks and students can use it whilst at school.
Unfortunately, not many students have Inspiration installed on their PC’s at home. Help is at hand! A web version of Inspiration is now available. Webspiration is an online visual thinking tool with diagram and outline views that help you to think visually, structure your work effectively and express your ideas.
To sign up for your free account, go to http://mywebspiration.com/. Be quick before these free registrations close.
What makes Webinspiration very attractive is the ability to collaborate and share documents by simply sending an invite. Everyone works on the same document, contributing, posting comments, and viewing changes. Webspiration is ideal for team projects, study groups, reviewing and commenting on documents and co-authoring materials.
I’m using Inspiration with my Year 7 English class in their planning for Narrative writing. It is difficult to get computer time to properly finish their mindmaps and to discuss them as a group. Now, they can complete their planning online. As we progress onto oral presentations and persuasive writing, I can create an Argument Development template to which the class can contribute until they are ready to start their own.
Visual thinking resources
- Visualising thinking within the ICT domain of VELS - Paula Christopherson’s presentation from the ICTEV conference in 2006
- Graphic Organisers – from Teachervision
- More on mind maps and online collaborative mind maps, see this post: Mind maps: a better way to collaborate
