Title: InspireData                                           
Publisher: Inspiration Software, Inc.
Content Area: Mathematics, Science and Social Studies
Hardware Requirements: Windows
                                                Windows 98 SE, 2000, NT 4.0, ME or XP
                                                64 MB RAM
                                                50 MB available hard drive space
                                                800 x 600 display
                                               Macintosh
                                                OS X version 10.2.8. or higher
                                                128 MB RAM
                                                50 MB available hard drive space
                                                800 x 600 display
Courseware functions: Problem solving
Grade Level: 4 - 12

Learning Problems
InspireData™ applies the proven strategies of visual learning to data literacy, inspiring students to discover meaning as they collect and explore data in a dynamic inquiry process. InspireData helps students successfully: Strengthen the inquiry process, build data analysis skills and improve data literacy.
Source: Inspiration.com

Essentially, this software addresses the problems of data analysis, data literacy and visual literacy.

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA

Instructional Design and Pedagogical Soundness
Data literacy is the ability to use data to answer questions. It is necessary to fulfill national science and mathematics standards. InspireData is a problem solving software, geared mainly towards students in upper middle school and high school. By using InspireData to collect and analyze data, students can make sense of the data encountered in daily life and acquire reasoning, inquiry and communication skills. Students formulate questions and make connections between data and its visual representations to interpret information, solve problems and draw conclusions. As a result, students develop deeper content knowledge and stronger critical thinking skills (Inspiration.com).The software’s capability of graphically representing data also assists in visual learning.

InspireData includes over 50 databases that can be used as is, or adapted to each teacher’s classroom needs. For each project in the Classroom Projects handbook provided with the software, details on the curricula area, grade level, data type, time, classroom application, student outcome, standards/learning objectives and preparation are included. In addition, assessment tips and suggestions for further exploration are provided. The data set relates directly to the pie plots, Venn plots and other graphical representations of the data, which the students choose to display. Different icons can be used to represent a specific type of data, for example male and female icons can be used to represent gender. InspireData contains no negative verbal comments or other feedback that would be considered abusive to students. The vocabulary and content used are appropriate for that grade level. Vocabulary is not a big issue, though, since students will be engaged mostly in data manipulation and interpretation. The plots that are generated are large and colors and graphical icons can be used to distinguish different types of data.

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