Digital Diagrams/Inspiration

First of all, I want to start off by saying that I absolutely love graphic organizers. I think that they are great teaching tools since so many different styles of learning and students with special learning needs can benefit from them. The visual aid alone is going to help so many. 

With this in mind, you can imagine my excitement when we began using the Inspiration software to create digital diagrams. I loved that everything is so customizable! Not only could the diagram itself serve as a visual aid, but the software would also allow you to make individual "bubbles" or sections of the diagram into pictures to represent words or ideas. I think that this would be a great way to encourage memorization of facts, or just help students form connections between a picture and new information. Also, this software could be used to make a diagram that is as "complete" and detailed as you like, or even as bare and skeletal as you like if you were going to be using it to create some guided note-taking sheets, etc. 

This activity was immediately following the interactive whiteboard activity, and I can't tell you how much of a breath of fresh air it truly was. Instead of having to literally create every single shape and line on every page, Inspiration has a seemingly endless stock of pre-made images and shapes. Navigation was fairly easy to figure out, and I think that this is definitely something that students could actually use within the classroom to create their own diagrams in any subject area. 

Here is a screen shot of my digital diagram (saved as a .jpg so feel free to open in whatever photo viewing tool you have for a better look) on different sonnet types. This would be ideal for a high school English class (probably seniors, as British Lit was taught in 12th grade at my high school): 

 

If you have access to Inspiration 9, here is a link to my website page where you can access the actual file: Digital Diagram