Computer (or mobile device)- writing composition

Hey Everyone,

The product for review on this post will be Kidspiration. I was able to download this software for a free 30 day trial. Kidspiration is a visual support software that helps children develop their reading and comprehension skills. The website for Kidspiration describes itself as "The visual way to explore and understand words, numbers and concepts" . This in my opinion is a true statement because it allows students to represent their ideas in graphic organizers using pictures and text. The feature I trialed for this review was the picture view and the writing view. 

I first decided on a story that I wanted to summarize. I selected Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. To begin I placed typed the word turkey in the search bar and then selected it to be by main idea. Next using the link symbols I dragged the arrow to point to a horse. Then added picture symbols to represent props from the turkey's costume. I repeated these steps with the pig and pizza. In order to keep the ideas organized I used Kidspirtation's "Super groupers". This feature helped because it surround all related ideas in an enclosed shape. 

This software is useful for students that have difficulty remembering many details to a story and for those that can't organize their thoughts in a cohesive paragraph. This would be helpful for them because once they are ready to write they can select the Writing View option and Kidspiration organizes and indents sentences and paragraphs. The software also makes use of text to speech software. For those beginning readers simply hovering over any menu icon provides the written text and speech. A feature I did not like about this software is that it does not recognize misspellings or have word prediction for use in the icon search bar or in the writing view. I think this addition to the software would be very useful for struggling writers and spellers. 

This is the Menu Page when the software is first opened. 

Here you may see my beginning draft. 

In the picture above I have added more details and the difference between ideas surrounded by a "super grouper" and not are shown here. The red arrow is pointing to the yellow circle that is the super grouper. There is also a blue arrow pointing to the word and picture "sheep" . I highlighted this because when the child is selecting the appropriate icon the software will speak the word. (I added the arrows in Paint, not part of the software)

 With a simple click on the Writing view icon, the program will format the organizer into a paragraph prompting format.