Kidspiration



1. What Kidspiration is all about:

Kidspiration is a software that serves as a visual learning to help students strengthen reading and writing skills, build conceptual understanding in math, and develop thinking skills. The software is great for kids as it has many friendly pictures and symbols that can complement or complete their work. Kidspiration promotes higher thinking, brainstorming, organization and analysis of information. It is designed to be used from kindergarten through fifth grade children.

2. Kidspiration Assignments:

We used kidspiration twice in this class. The first assignment was to create an activity for children using kidspiration, The second activity was to create an outline of our researched paper using kidspiration. Details and guidance were given along with the assignment. Above are the two files containing the work I produced for the 2 assignments.

3. What I have learned through the assignment to use in my future classroom

I have learned that kidspiration is a great tool for helping children to brainstorm their ideas and organize the information they have found. I will therefore teach the children to use kidspiration as a graphic organizer for their thoughts and ideas. I will encourage them to use kidspiration for brainstorming and preparing their abbreviated presentation.  I will also use it to prepare activities to share with the children in the classroom or for a homework as I have done in the assignment (see the top of the page).

4. NAEYC assignment the kidspiration activities were related to:

Although the assignment could be related to many NAEYC standard, I have chosen to show how the assignment matches the standard 6, on becoming a professional, especially its substandard 6c (engaging in continuous, collaborative learnign to inform practice; using technology effectively with young children, with peers, and as a professional resource). Indeed, exploring more technology, learning how to use the kidspiration software, using it to prepare an activity for children and using it to prepare an outline of a research paper, is definitely part of becoming more professional and more knowledgeable.