Digital mapping

Holy cow. I forgot how much I like Inspiration. We learned to use it in the cohort, but my 35 kid classrooms and 32 computers in a computer lab conundrum has kept me from utilizing it. I've gotta figure that out. Here's mine:


My Inspiration mind map is all about how I can use digital tools to help kids in the writing process. Fleshing that out could be my final project.

The part I got most excited about is the Creative Writers. We do this "town project" (which I stole from Crosswinds and have adapted for h.s. writers) where the whole class picks a place for a group of people to live, then they create 20 characters who live there. In the past, students have chosen a boarding school, a village in Mexico, and an apartment building in Uptown Minneapolis. The stories have to fit together and can't contradict each other. Kids always really like this project, but it's really hard, too. It takes an abnormal amount of communication and coordination compared to the average high school class.

Enter: wikis. This would solve a lot of problems. I'm jazzed about using them to make this town project more efficient, and probably work on a deeper level.

As for my 9th graders, their level of thinking is using fast and surfacey. They are Get It Done people. But they love technology. I think using Inspiration to help them think about the 3 papers we have left this semester: compare/contrast, research, and persuasion, will really help them think more deeply and make better connections, especially my visual and kinesthetic learners.

I'm a little overwhelmed re: the other digital note-taking tools. What have people used that works? It's tough to get computer lab time in my school (although compared to other schools, it's not terrible--we only have a week at a time to sign up for, not the whole quarter or semester) so I've got to make that time count.