Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Fun with XTimeline and myWebspiration

My eight year old daughter has been working on a biographical book report about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Tonight I helped her digitize her paper-and-pencil timeline with XTimeline and her character map using myWebspiration. Both are free web 2.0 tools I think are wonderful.

Sarah posted a link to her timeline to our family learning blog, and I posted a screenshot of the character map there as well.

Tomorrow we may record a VoiceThread together, using her character map as a storyboard. My biggest headache with these tools was actually printing the myWebspiration document. It kept cutting off the right side of the diagram, even when I moved the items around and resized them.

I published the article “Inspiration Software: An Essential Tool in Every Classroom” in 2002-2003 in TCEA’s TechEdge magazine. I’m delighted that myWebspiration works almost identically to Inspiration client software. The website is still in free beta, and I’d guess before long it will offer some kind of fee-based or subscription-based version.

If you’re interested in free concept mapping software, be sure to check out CMapTools, as well as Frank Pirrone’s presentation for K12Online07 on CMapTools, “Collaborative Concept Mapping – Breaking the Bounds of Location and Time… for $0.00 per Seat.” Freemind is another free concept mapping software program, but I have not used it at all. I’ve only dabbled with CMapTools a bit. I have more links for concept mapping available on delicious.

Have you had good or bad experiences working with either XTimeline or myWebspiration with students?

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One response to “Fun with XTimeline and myWebspiration”

  1. Tech Support Avatar

    Wesley,

    I’m glad to learn you’re exploring the free Public Beta of Webspiration! You mentioned you had difficulty printing a Webspiration document and I’d be happy to investigate this with you. Learning a bit more information about the behavior should provide some clues as to the cause of it. That said, I invite you to contact me directly at techsupport at inspiration dot com.

    I look forward to your response.

    Sincerely,

    Mike Marsh
    Webspiration Tech Support Team
    Inspiration Software, Inc.
    9400 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway
    Suite 300
    Beaverton, OR 97005-3300