Friday, June 27th, 2008...7:27 pm
Inspiration VS. Bubbl.us
As an English Language Arts teacher, I’ve always felt guilty that I didn’t advocate for the use of Inspiration software in my classroom. According to inspiration.com, “Inspiration is the essential tool students rely on to plan, research and complete projects successfully.” But I’ve never liked it. It seems cumbersome to orientate, resize and print, and my limited experience with it showed that kids spent more time choosing the shape of their thought bubbles than what goes in them. Plus, there’s so many options – arrow directions, colors, picture associations, rapid fire typing, diagram view, outline view, etc. It seems silly to spend more time teaching the tool than the skill.
I’m now beginning to rethink the use of mapping applications in my classroom. Bubbl.us is a free online app for brainstorming and organizing ideas. Once created, your organizer can be embedded, saved, printed, or emailed. Graphics can still be created and saved without an account, however, once signed up for the free service, multiple users can be given access to the same organizer, allowing for easy group collaboration.
The beauty of bubbl.us is in its simplicity. No crazy icons or extras here. Color can be changed to help identify groupings and parent/sibling relationships, but otherwise, bubbl.us is all business. It even looks better than Inspiration, whose default green bubbles and plain, one-dimensional shapes scream Web 1.0. Best of all it’s free, vs. Inspiration’s $69.00 price tag.
If you’re looking for an easy and effective way to help improve writing organization (and your pocket book is feeling a bit light), take a look at bubbl.us.
4 Comments
June 27th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I have also always shared your distaste for Inspiration. I just felt like it was limited in some ways and to foofey in others. I’m totally into using technology in my classroom, but I just don’t need kids brainstorming for hours because they are trying to figure out a computer program. I look forward to trying bubbl.us and fervently hope it’s not blocked by our district’s filter!
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I have not used Inspiration in my classroom, but with these frustrations I think I will try bubbl.us instead and not waste any time. Thank you for sharing all these things you have discovered. How do you find out about all these resources?
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:59 am
Hello Singintchr,
Thanks for visiting my blog! I find many of my resources while aimlessly trolling the web, but sometimes I find great stuff on social bookmarking sites such as digg.com and del.icio.us. If you don’t have accounts at either of these, I suggest you give them a try! Thanks again for reading!
July 31st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I just discovered your site and I am excited to check it out some more. Thanks for the info on Bubbl.us. I have been using Inspiration and I like the idea of alternative. I am going to check it out.
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