Inspiration: Eating My Own Dogfood



Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that the students who I teach think I'm just blowing hot air at them when I teach them to use new technologies or programs. For instance, at the beginning of the year I taught them how to use Inspiration to graphically organize their writing. I have yet to see any of them actually independently use the program to organize their own writing.

So it was a great lesson today when I went into the fifth grade classroom and shared with them how I "ate my own dogfood" and used Inspiration to organize a ten page paper I am writing for Dr. Margaret Riel, my advisor from Pepperdine's Online Master's in Educational Technology program. I am writing about my Action Research Project where I transformed the Tech Club I ran into a more inclusive educational environment. You can see part of my outline above. The students were impressed (I think) that I use the same tools I teach them to use. I hope they realize the benefits of a graphical organizer and see that adults, too, can benefit from tools like this when they write.

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