Kidsperation & Insperation

I Learned a lot about the computer programs Kidsperation and Inspiration this week and found many ways to use kidsperation in my classroom.

After playing on Kidsperation for over an hour i realized what a valuable resource it will be to both me and my students in the classroom. The mathview program on it is a great way to teach students about geometry especially cubes. It's a fun way to learn about volume, area and perimeter and even surface area of a 3-D shape. The students can also separate the cube into parts to see the shape broken down into pieces. I had a lot of fun on this program and my students would also love to use this program because you can change the size of the shapes and the color which allows for creativity in my classroom and makes learning about shapes more enjoyable.

An English program on Kisperation is a great way to help students learn how to write outlines, form a main idea or thesis of a paper and keep their thoughts organized. This program is probably more effective for students 5th and 6th grade to help them with a paper i ask them to write. But i can use it for younger students just to form the basic idea of how to organize a paper to make later grades of writing papers a little easier for my students.

"Why I am Special" program was also one of my favorite programs in the reading and writing section of Kidsperation. Students can write about themselves in text boxes underneath pictures of a heart, head and a house. It asks the students what their unique talent is hobbies etc. This is a great program to help the students get to know each other and create a good social environment for my students. I could even have them create this page and then print them out and either put them in a book for the class to find out about their class mates, make books for all the students, or i could make a wall in my classroom where i take one of my students creations and spotlight them in class and then post it on a getting to know you wall for all my students to read in the classroom. Any or all of these ideas would work well in my classroom; this activity will also help my students with defining themselves as young people by talking about themselves and help them understand that everyone they associate with has different talents and abilities to contribute to our classroom. And in the process i can also learn more about my students interests and what kind of people they are.

In the math section of Kidsperation i found a program about bar graphs that uses tables of virtually any item you give them; the example in the program is about colors; Its asks the students to place the number of boxes in the spaces for the number of each color and see which color was the most popular among students and it asks you to record your observations. This is another great program to make bar graphs a fun interactive for my students to learn about.

I found the program "Alikes and Differences" in the science section of Kidsperation. Made for younger students this program is a great way to teach my students about science and grouping of similar things in the science world. The program even allows my students to browse for pictures of similar things and paste them to the page and then write about why these science objects are similar. It meets all three forms of learning if i do it with them on the computer i can include the auditory, the visual and the kinesthetic students in my classroom making this a very effective tool to enhance learning in my classroom. And i had a lot of fun playing on this program myself.

The last program i found was in Social Studies called "How Well Do You Know the 5o States?" Although i think this program is more suited for a teacher thats focus is on social studies i think this is a wonderful way to test students memory of the 50 states and where they are located on a map. Rather than using paper this program allows for creativity, memory, hands on learning and allowing the students to use a medium they are very comfortable and will make the learning or testing of the states enjoyable for the students. For my age group focus i could probably use this program to introduce them to the 50 states and not as a means of testing them on the states but as a way to be aware of the states names and locations. There is also a function on the computers i could tell my student about after they have had fun trying to figure out how all the states fit together; this function tells them what each states name is. I would have to show them a completed map as an example on an powerpoint hooked up to my computer so they can compare the completed map to theres and see how well they did.

Now for Insperation; honestly i didn't find a lot of reasons why this program would be an important tool to use in my classroom. It was obviously not created for students but more directed for educators; even then i found little use for it in my teaching except to help me create an outline for my classroom lessons. It also had cool pictures but i don't understand why there was just a Van Diagram in the program with a million pictures. I probably will not be using this program in my future classroom and it was worth the ten minutes you told us to spend on it.

However, I will definately be using Kidsperation in my classroom. I had a great spirit of discovery as i played and learned from this program on tuesday; in essence i found my inner elementary schooler, which is not hard to find, but i had fun learning about the programs involved in Kidsperation and could've easily spent a lot more time exploring these wonderful interactive activities for my students. This program has also reaffermed my desire to be a teacher because i am excited to use it in my future classroom so thanks for the assignment.