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(The following article appears on the LD online Web Site
www.ldonline.com)
Using Inspiration® to Organize Reading and Writing
Kristin S. Kight University of Delaware February 1998
Thanks to Kristin Kight, a doctoral student at the University of Delaware, for
supplying this software review to LD OnLine.
About seven years ago, a former student of mine and I
got together for a visit over the holidays and she showed me a software package
that she was sure I'd like. It was an early version of Inspiration® by
Inspiration Software® Inc. which allowed the user to make concept maps, or webs
on a computer screen and then, with the click of a mouse, turn them into
outlines.
Cheryle was convinced I'd like this because I had introduced the use of
pencil and paper concept mapping to her class of eleventh grade American History
students as a tool to help them see connections between events and the concepts
embedded in them. The students in her class, and the others with whom I'd
used concept mapping since, found the webs useful but the process of making them
cumbersome and frustrating. Cheryle wanted me to see that using the computer
made this much easier. She was right!
The program made the connection between assembling content, comprehension
of the relationships between ideas and events, and organizing an essay outline
to communicate that understanding.
Some students had real difficulty writing
cogent essays at test time, or producing term papers. They'd been taught how to
construct an outline earlier in their schooling, but often did not see how to
use one in writing tasks. If required to present an outline, they'd write the
essay and then the outline. At test time, these students either did not do any
planning prior to writing, or they'd sketch out a few ideas but fail to organize
them sensibly.
MacArthur's and his colleagues' (1993 ) finding that novice writers in
general and learning disabled writers in particular spend little time on
planning, take a conversational approach to writing, and do very little editing,
suggests that the use of a tool like Inspiration® might be helpful in working
with students who have trouble with organizing what they read and write. My
experience and the findings of other researchers has also shown that this is the
case.
I began to use Inspiration® with two of my more worrisome students and
found that they improved rapidly in terms of their willingness to spend time
working out connections in the material presented in class and in readings, and
in their essay planning. Inspiration® alone was not enough to do this but it
made the teaching of both content and writing easier for me and facilitated
breaking through a barrier to progress for the students. Since then the program
has been revised five times and found its way into a number of uses. Here are
summarized some of the research that has been done on its use and an example
from my own work using it with students to compensate for organizational
learning difficulties.
Lynne Anderson-Inman and her colleagues at the Center for Electronic
Studying, University of Oregon, have studied the use of CBCM (Computer-based
concept mapping) using the Inspiration® software program (see reference list). They
have found that using this program facilitates brainstorming, synthesizing
information, organizing it into logical hierarchies and creating outlines from
which to develop written compositions. They identify a three- step process for
creating a concept map as a prewriting strategy: generate, orchestrate and
elaborate.
 The
generation phase involves brainstorming ideas related to the writing project,
including content ideas and any structural requirements of the assignment. Using
Inspiration's "Rapid Fire" feature, students type each idea in a
"node," or bubble, on the screen. These ideas can be reorganized into
a concept map in the next step of the prewriting process.
In the
orchestration phase, students arrange the material they have entered into the
web into conceptual groups by linking the nodes. Material from reading
sources may be added as well. Inspiration® allows the user to click a menu choice
which converts the web instantly into outline form, which further encourages
logical organization of ideas and source material into a linear plan for the
finished written document.
In the
third phase, the student elaborates on the information, using either the concept
map form or the outline form of Inspiration®. Entries can be put into
sentence form and the structure of paragraphs set in place within the outline.
The student can "focus in" on any individual level of the outline
leaving the others hidden for the moment and work only on the one in view, fine
tuning it for logic, completeness ad style. Each level can then be placed back
into the whole and the student can continue to edit for clear connection of the
ideas subordinate to the main idea or thesis of the document. Finally, the
student can copy and paste the entire outline into a word processing program for
final editing and production.
In a study of the impact of using CBCM and Inspiration®, Zeitz and
Anderson-Inman found that the program was useful in stimulating background
knowledge prior to the start of a unit of study and in actively constructing
students' understanding of the material presented in the unit. Further, they
found that teachers could use the concept maps and outlines generated by the
students to assess the level of student comprehension and to correct
misconceptions that became apparent as the students entered and linked new
concepts as they learned (Zeitz & Anderson-Inman, 1992; Zeitz &
Anderson-Inman, 1993).
Anderson-Inman and Zeitz describe the value of using a computer to make
concept maps as taking "the eraser dust out of concept mapping"
(Anderson-Inman & Zeitz, 1993). One of the impediments to using paper-
and- pencil concept mapping is that revisions, which are a central function of
concept mapping and take place often as new ideas are added or links are
adjusted to convey changes in meaning, are frustrating to carry out in a pencil
and paper medium. Using the computer permits students to make changes rapidly
and neatly, allowing them to focus on the meaning-making process rather than on
mechanics.
An example from my work with an individual student provides a look at the
power of this tool for a bright boy with learning difficulties. Ryan was
referred to me after being diagnosed with some attentional difficulty and
significant organizational problems at his academically challenging private
school. His grades were falling despite his obvious intelligence and his high IQ
scores. When I met Ryan and asked him to tell me what was going on, he replied
that he was "lost in here" pointing to his head. He felt that he was
paying attention, that he was doing all he could to meet the demands of his
curriculum, but failing just the same. It turned out that his mother, with the
best of intentions, was doing his homework for him. She would sit with him as he
began and then, under the guise of helping him, she took over and did the work
herself, much of it out-loud, as Ryan took dictation. He would take the work to
school and his conscientious teachers would try to point out ways that he could
improve his work. Ryan would attempt to grasp their advice and relay it to his
mother, but the situation was so removed from his control that he spiraled
downward in confidence and willingness to try.
As Ryan and I began to work together, I introduced him to Inspiration® and
asked him to use it to create notes from his reading. He was to identify the
thesis of the chapter and the main ideas being used to support that thesis and
to arrange these in a web so that we could see the lines of relationship between
the ideas. I asked him to look deeper for the details the author presented as
important to each idea. When he was finished, we converted the web to an outline
and corrected the linear organization of the material in it. This process
allowed me to walk Ryan through principles of writing and to help him build his
own comprehension of his assignment. We moved from there to creating new webs
and outlines in response to essay questions provided by his teachers. He loved
it, and was anxious to show his mother and his teachers what he'd done. They
were impressed with his new skills, and he began to teach his mother how to use
the program herself. It was the beginning of a redefinition of their
relationship which went on to be a healthier one.
Inspiration® alone would not
have been enough to resolve all of Ryan's issues, of course, but without it the
job would have been much more difficult because the motivating power of the tool
in his own hands, and the speed with which he could create a visual and semantic
representation of his learning went a long way to energizing Ryan and helping
him make better use of his potential.
Since my introduction to Inspiration® in its original form, I have used it
with students in classroom situations, in working one-on-one with students who
suffer from a number of learning disabilities, and extensively in my own writing
and education. My experience agrees with the research findings on the use of
this program. I have also found that using Inspiration® is motivating for kids
who've lost much of the pleasure of learning. They can visually demonstrate to
themselves that they are learning and making progress in transferring what they
take into and what they put out in their own writing. This is practical
empowerment and more meaningful motivation than any encouragement that comes
from an external source.
References
Anderson-Inman, L., & Horney, M. (1997). Computer-based concept mapping:
enhancing literacy with tools for visual thinking. Journal of Adolescent and
Adult Literacy, 40(4), 302-306.
Anderson-Inman, L., Horney, M. A., & Knox-Quinn, C. Empowering students
with Powerbooks: Computer-based study strategies for students with learning
disabilities. , University of Oregon, Eugene, OR.
Anderson-Inman, L., Redekopp, R., & Adams, V. Electronic studying: Using
computer-based outlining programs as study tools. , 337-358.
Anderson-Inman, L., & Zeitz, L. (1993). Computer-Based Concept Mapping:
Active Studying for active learners. The Computer Teacher.(August/September).
MacArthur, C. A., Graham, S., & Schwartz, S. S. (1993). Integrating word
processing and strategy instruction into a process approach to writing. School
Psychology Review, 22(4), 671-681.
Zeitz, L., & Anderson-Inman, L. (1992, ). The effects of computer-based
formative concept mapping on learning high school science. Paper presented at
the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.
Zeitz, L., & Anderson-Inman, L. (1993, ). Computer-based concept mapping
in a high school biology class: effects of student characteristics. Paper
presented at the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA.
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