Inspiration software

Innovative Georgia program shapes technology
around curriculum goals

THERE'S A SCIENCE teacher in Georgia sitting around a computer with a group of students. They're working on classification of animals. The teacher calls out the name of a creature, and the group discusses in which category to place it. When they've made their decision, the teacher enters it into the animal classification flowchart they're creating with Inspiration.

This brief exercise is a triumph for the InTech program at Georgia's Kennesaw State University.

 

InTech, short for Integrating Technology, is an innovative new teacher technology training model developed at Kennesaw by Linda Whitacre and Traci Redish. Based on recent research on how adults learn, the InTech program teaches teachers how to bring technology into the classroom by focusing on the application of the technology, rather than the technology itself. As InTech Instructor Jim Wright explained, "Teachers don't want to learn software. They want to learn what to do with software."

Jerrie Cheek, a teacher in the InTech program, sent us a diagram that she created in one of her classes. It's a concept map that talks about the rainforest. Click here to view it.

Our science teacher, for example, never spent much time learning to use the software that she's built into her curriculum. The week-long InTech program helped her build technology projects based on her curriculum objectives -- such as teaching the taxonomic system -- and then gave her the technical skills she needed to carry them out.

Because Inspiration is so easy to use that it takes almost no time for either teachers or students to learn it, it is "one of the most important software packages InTech uses," Mr. Wright said.

Furthermore, Inspiration is one of the rare software programs that is applicable in any curriculum -- from science to social studies to language arts -- and at all grade levels, so that once students (and teachers) learn it, they can use it in any class.

But most important for InTech, Inspiration is a "transparent" program that allows users to focus on their ideas, not the software.

"InTech believes in building technology projects based on curricular objectives," Mr. Wright said, "rather than adapting the curriculum to the abilities of the technology." Inspiration, therefore, is "the right kind of software," he says -- one that's flexible enough to fit the needs of the user. With Inspiration, educators can teach what's in their curriculum, rather than changing the curriculum to work with their technology.

Our science teacher has learned this principle perfectly. She's found a near-seamless way to integrate technology into the classroom using Inspiration. She's teaching a concept -- scientific classification -- that's been a part of her curriculum for years. But she's using the new technology, Inspiration, to engage her students in a more interesting and dynamic way.