Inspiration for Art in the Class

          When I was first explained the program, Inspiration, I thought of it as something that would be most useful in content areas such as English or the sciences, but the more I think of it, the more ideas it gives me.  Here are a couple of effective uses for Inspiration:

1. Inspiration can obviously be used as a timeline for different movements in art history. This would be very useful for me to organize information for my students.
2. In terms of art history, it can be very useful for creating connections to different movements. Not all points in history are linear in time and some artistic movements relate to periods in time that are in a completely different era. For instance, Neoclassicism period paintings that were done in the early 19th mirror the Greco-Roman style during the Classical period. Students would be able to make these connections very easily with a nicely made chart using Inspiration.
3. A web could easily represent an art movement in the center with artists and their famous paintings surrounding the outside.
4. Webs can also be helpful for displaying the elements and principles of design.
5. I could use diagrams to represent colors on the color wheel, as well as give them labels not only for their color but also for their order in the wheel. 
6. Students could use this program very effectively when they are doing presentations. They could use Inspiration to create charts such as a Venn diagram, a timeline, or a tree to show the progression and influence of movements through time. 
7. Webs can be used as a planning device for projects. When a student is struggling with inspiration for a project, he or she can use a web to plan out important ideas and materials that could be used.
8. I could use Inspiration webs for critiques. They could write down the name of the artist and write where he or she could improve in the artwork.
9. Outlining is an important thing to teach my students because they will be expected to be able to take good notes and write essays their entire high school/college careers. I would tell them to use inspiration to make outlines for presentations, essays, etc.
10. The last effective way of using Inspiration could be for helping me plan out an entire unit. If I create a web then the individual arms are lessons that I should include within my unit.