Inspiration is the essential tool students rely on to plan, research and complete projects successfully. With the integrated Diagram and Outline Views, they create graphic organizers and expand topics into writing. This powerful combination encourages learning in multiple modes. As a result, students gain and retain a better understanding of concepts and demonstrate knowledge, improving their performance across the curriculum.

Improve 6th to 12th grade skills:

Plan and organize
Research and evaluate
Comprehend and communicate

Educators use Inspiration to customize instruction, achieve standards, assess student projects and energize learning. An expanded selection of 120+ cross-curricular templates in language arts, social studies, science, planning and thinking makes starting assignments quick and easy.

Visualize ideas, concepts and relationships

In Diagram View, students create graphic organizers - a core element of visual learning - to analyze, compare and evaluate information. They quickly brainstorm new ideas with the RapidFire tool, search the symbol collection to find images to represent any concept, and insert and play multimedia files. To show relationships between ideas, students link symbols and add words to further clarify meaning.

Improve writing proficiency

As they start the writing process, students use visually integrated notes to expand topics and switch to Outline View to further develop their ideas. The integrated Word Guide helps students choose words with more precision, and a contextual spell checker automatically identifies misspelled words. To finalize projects, students can transfer to their favorite word processor or transform their work into a web site with the Site Skeleton export tool.

Plan and organize projects

Inspiration helps students organize information, develop thinking skills and demonstrate knowledge. Drag-and-drop actions and hyperlinks make it easy to gather research and connect to files and web resources. As students develop their projects, they use AutoArrange to automatically format their diagrams.

Inspiration Web Resources

More than 1 million symbols
50+ Curriculum Packets
On-demand training videos

Features

Inspiration's integrated diagramming and outlining views and complementary learning capabilities work together to make Inspiration the essential tool to help students visualize, think, organize and learn.

Visualize thoughts in Diagram View

In the Diagram View, students easily create and use concept maps, webs, and other graphic organizers. The result is clearer thinking, more-creative projects, better-organized writing, and improved student performance.

In the Diagram View you can:

Capture ideas as quickly as you think with the RapidFire tool.
Add as little or as much text as you want - symbols grow automatically to record your thoughts.
Illustrate ideas and convey meanings by inserting symbols from the web or other applications using the insert graphic, drag & drop, or copy & paste functions.
Show relationships between ideas with the Link tool.
Explain relationships between ideas by adding text directly on the links.
Rearrange symbols by dragging without breaking links.
Differentiate among ideas with colors, shapes, patterns, shadows, fonts and styles.
Bring writing power with visually integrated notes.
Explore multiple main ideas simultaneously.

Transform a diagram into an outline instantly!

With the click of your mouse, you can transform an Inspiration diagram into a traditional hierarchical outline. In the powerful Outline View, students can quickly prioritize and rearrange ideas, helping them create clear, concise essays, reports and more.

Use the Outline View to:

Organize topics by dragging - subtopics move automatically.
Plan projects and track ideas using the Checklist feature. Simply mark off completed items in either the Diagram or Outline View.
Develop topics into a written report using notes text.
Export your outline to popular word processing or presentation programs.

Toolbars make using Inspiration easy!

Diagram Toolbar

Outline Toolbar

Formatting Toolbar

Major Inspiration functions are at your fingertips with smart toolbars. No need to memorize keyboard shortcuts or search through menu items to find features - just click on the toolbar and keep working! If you do have a question or problem, a fully indexed and searchable help system provides answers to all your Inspiration questions.

One click to word processing

Inspiration's one-click transfer instantly moves students' work to their favorite word processor. After working in Inspiration to brainstorm, organize and outline, students then use Microsoft Word or AppleWorks to finish the writing process and prepare their paper for publication.

Simplified template integration

Inspiration sparks teacher creativity with inspiring new ways to design and use templates... the fastest way to introduce visual learning and Inspiration to students in all subjects.

Template Wizard - Create customized visual learning activities! The Template Wizard gives teachers step-by-step help for designing templates to support any curriculum area.
Flexible template access - Use and share templates with ease! Templates can be stored and launched from any location, making them readily available for students and teachers.
60+ templates - Quickly integrate visual learning into your classroom! A wealth of ideas from across the curriculum inspires students and teachers to plan, organize and create.

Symbols at your fingertips

Inspiration contains over 1,300 colorful, high-resolution symbols, including several hundred photographic quality images and animated symbols. Students just scroll through the floating symbol palette to find exactly the right shape to express their thoughts. And, if you want to customize your work, you can recolorize an existing symbol or import images from other applications and the Internet.

Audio supports multiple learning styles

Students can hear work read aloud or record their own words, adding a new dimension to their projects. A talking interface increases accessibility for all learners.

Direct connection to the Internet

You can set up live hyperlinks in Inspiration and tie the immense resources of the World Wide Web into your diagrams and outlines. Just type in a web address and Inspiration automatically creates a hyperlink. You can also create web pages with URL hyperlinks through the HTML export function and drag & drop JPEG and GIF images into Inspiration diagrams straight from the web!

Gather and present information from multiple sources, including documents created in Inspiration or any other application, by hyperlinking to any file.

Compatibility with Inspiration for Palm OS

Sync to and from Inspiration for Palm OS. Expand and enhance diagrams created on the handheld, or transfer projects to the handheld for on-the-go visual thinking and learning!

Web site planning made easy

Build the bones of a new web site with the Site Skeleton export. Each symbol becomes a separate web page, complete with appropriate hyperlinks. Inspiration even creates a site map for you.