Spark Educator

www.spark-space.com/educator

KS3 (Years 7 - 9)

ICT

This product is published by Spark-Space Ltd (Tel: 0870 240 4809)

This is a content-free piece of software for use with an interactive whiteboard which allows you to create, link and annotate ideas into headings, sub-headings, etc. These ideas are represented visually and can be moved around the screen or re-ordered to create a mind map. Although it is content-free, sample files are supplied, and can be used to organise thoughts in any Curriculum area. If you are the type of teacher who enjoys teaching collaboratively, or who likes to encourage students to organise their thoughts in a way which better suits them, then this is potentially a very useful piece of software. For those who teach and learn in a variety of ways, this might well be worthy of serious consideration.

The software was used in a Year 7 Humanities lesson of mixed ability boys and girls. The objectives were to understand the reasons behind the English Civil War and summarise them. The pupils organised statement cards of reasons into groups and then identified the main headings. As a whole class, the teacher collected these heading titles and the software was used to categorise them into three main headings. The pupils then offered their summaries and instructed the teacher as to which heading they came under. The software enabled the information to be collected and reorganised quickly. The final map could then be displayed as a piece of prose, where the main ideas and information were displayed as a word-processed document. Spark Educator is a useful piece of mindmapping software, which can help to organise the thoughts of pupils and teachers alike.