Multimedia visual mapping programs such as Inspiration and Kidspiration are perfect for planning a multimedia presentation, creating stories, organizing information, developing understanding of concepts and expressing and sharing ideas.

William Shakespeare created with Inspiration.
Through the process of creating diagrams, students gather all the information needed to write an in-depth book report. At the same time students are creating a visual map and an outline, which will help in the writing process. Additionally, this outline can be transferred to Microsoft Word and saved as a picture.

To view another example click here: Fourth Grade Class

There are many ways to use concept maps: Students can use them to access prior knowledge, to organize and present current knowledge, and to explore new information and relationships. Creating a concept map involves:

1) Identifying important concepts in a domain of knowledge.
2) Arranging those concepts spatially.
3) Identifying relationships among concepts.
4) Labeling the nature of the relationships among those concepts.

Creating a concept map encourages convergent thinking because students have to manipulate information and think about relationships among different concepts. They are also forced to think about how concepts in a domain fit together and to identify additional ideas or concepts that need to be included.