Educational software has opened new and exciting windows of opportunities for literacy instruction. Students can be exposed to software such as Inspiration and Kidspiration as they explore ideas and synthesise information in order to produce concept maps.
Tompkins(2009) cites Silverman as describing Inspiration as an online graphic tool which aids in students' ability to "visualise, think, organise, and learn." The software was targeted at older students from Grades 6 to 12 or in the English Caribbean education system from standard 5 to Form 6. Kidspiration is designed for students from kindergarten to Grade 5 or from kindergarten to Standard 4.
Inspiration allows students to create diagrams which can be used in writing or other literacy activities or in any content area. Teachers need to prepare students for their existence and survival in this competitive and digital world and the use of educational software helps to facilitate this. Students need to be taught to interface with these new literacies as they develop skills while interfacing with the software. They learn to navigate, represent information not only textually, but graphically and use multimodal media in creating literacy projects.
Teachers must first become competent in the use of the educational software if they are to actively engage students in the classroom.
Webspiration and Kidspiration are indeed powerful graphic organizers that children can use in all subject areas to enhance literacy, thinking and organizational skills. Although Webspiration is one of the best graphic organizer software available, it is accessed online and the potential issue with that is availability for those who do not have access to the internet or failure of the internet connection.
ReplyDeleteI remembered that our lecturer told me that there is a version of Webspiration called Kidspiration that one can install on one's computer thus eliminating the need for online access. I downloaded the program, installed it and tried it out. I was happy to see that the user interface is very attractive for children. It is not as powerful as Webspiration but very powerful still. I was able to easily create a professional looking graphic organizer which you can see in my post on "Enabling the differently able".