Education Program - Partners in Learning

LANGUAGE ARTS: eZedia and Inspiration

eZedia & Inspiration PDF Subject: Language Arts Grades: K - 12 Challenge: To improve student literacy, comprehension, and communication skills. Solution: eZediaMX, eZediaQTI, and Inspiration (or for younger children, Kidspiration) Benefits: Combining technologies from eZedia and Inspiration, aid students in building stronger conceptual maps, engaging them in the learning experience, and fostering literacy.

Improving student literacy, comprehension, and communication skills are major challenges facing today's educators. To succeed in overcoming these challenges requires active participation from the students. A critical factor in the process of active participation is student engagement. Research shows that the longer a student's attention is focused on a task in an active engaged manner, the greater the likelihood for the comprehension and the retention of concepts.

Planning, researching, writing, and producing a Language Arts assignment can be a significant mental exercise for any student. Incorporating digital media technology into educational exercises engages the students - improving learning outcomes, and achieving higher levels of student comprehension.

Inspiration and Kidspiration are tools that help students brainstorm, organize, outline, and write with visual learning techniques such as concept mapping, webbing, and more. Combining the student's comprehension of an exercise with eZedia's multimedia authoring tools-eZediaMX and eZediaQTI-engages the student throughout the entire learning process. From single words or phrases in the Inspiration concept map, students can extend their learning by gathering and creating corresponding video, graphic, audio, and text elements to make their thoughts visual - all the while, remaining focused and engaged.

As outlined in ISTE's† National Educational Technology Standards for Students, when a student's thinking becomes more visible to themselves and others, it offers opportunities to participate in a collaborative process that supports the development of communication and digital literacy skills. Conceptual mapping from Inspiration combined with the power of digital media authoring from eZedia offer a natural collaboration for improving student literacy, comprehension, and communication skills. In addition, it makes learning for the students visual and fun.

For more information on eZedia and Inspiration visit:

www.ezedia.com

www.inspiration.com

† International Society For Technology in Education