Inspiration Software

Students learn real study skills in virtual world

Professor Lucy MacDonald's students take field trips every week -- and not just within Salem, OR, where her college is located, but around the world. They travel, of course, through the internet. And they take Inspiration everywhere they go.

The "field trips" are part of an online class that Prof. MacDonald teaches through Chemeketa Community College. Students from across the US sign up for this class, communicate via email and, rather than attending traditional lectures, "travel" to informational web sites around the globe. They read everything available at the web sites, and then they use Inspiration to take notes.

 

The classes Prof. MacDonald teaches on campus also require that students use Inspiration to take notes. In many ways Inspiration is the focus of her classes, because Prof. MacDonald teaches study skills.

Other teachers in K-12 use Inspiration while searching the web. See the story about Larry Lewin & Vicky Ayers.

"I always recommend Inspiration to my students," she says. "It's one of the best tools for helping them organize their ideas." Inspiration also helps them organize and prioritize other people's ideas. For example, when students read articles from the internet, they have difficulty identifying which information is most important. There's no table of contents, no questions for review, no stated objectives. So Prof. MacDonald teaches her students how to decide for themselves what information is important.

While they're reading, her students enter the facts that seem relevant into Inspiration. Each fact appears in its own symbol. Then, after the reading, students reorganize and prioritize the symbols. The resulting diagram literally shows which facts are important and which are just added detail. And when t hey know what's important, they know what to study.

Furthermore, Prof. MacDonald explains, Inspiration diagrams show students the links between ideas that aren't obvious in a string of text.

Prof. MacDonald's students also use Inspiration to review information they've already learned. They use a technique called mind mapping. Prof. MacDonald's students use it to brainstorm ideas -- out of their heads, into Inspiration.

"As an example," Prof. MacDonald says, "in one of my classes, a student was going to have an economics test in her next period. So the whole class created a mind map on economics." The student explained what she knew on the subject, and the rest of the class entered her main ideas into the map. When she'd finished, they could look at the map and easily see how major concepts related. This process also helped the student, who received an excellent economics grade.

"Study skills are really the most important skills you can teach students," Prof. MacDonald says. "They have to learn how to learn before they can effectively synthesize new information. Note-taking with Inspiration helps me teach them this skill." It's a skill they'll take with them when they move into the workplace -- and around the world, both virtual and real!