Inspiration is a graphical organizer program where you can easily cluster ideas, arrange those ideas into logical groups use interesting symbols and pictures, and turn your clusters into outline form, and much more.

Clustering Basics:

The idea behind clustering is to brainstorm and get ideas down as they freely flow into your head. Inspiration is a great tool for doing this. Start with a main idea. Highlight the words main idea and change it to your main idea.

1. Click anywhere on the screen and type another idea. A round symbol will appear with the text inside it.
2. Continue doing this with all your sub-ideas.

You will want to connect your symbols with arrows to signify relationships:

When you click on a symbol you will see a small red diamond on each of it's four sides. You can click and drag a connecting arrow from the red diamond to another symbol to show a relationship.

Notice that you can drag any symbol anywhere on the screen and the connecting arrow will always remain with the symbol until you change it.

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A faster way to cluster is to use the "Rapid Fire" command.

Click on your main idea symbol to select it and then click on this "Rapid Fire" button at the top of the screen.

Begin clustering and typing your ideas.

After each idea, press "return." You will see a red lightening bolt appear after the word you just typed. In about a second a new symbol will appear with a connecting arrow attached. You can cluster and type as quickly as you wish and the connecting symbols will appear themselves.

Type this...

...It will come out like this.

You have a wide choice of symbols and options to choose from. By clicking on a symbol to select it you can change its color by choose a color from the color palette shown below. Highlight the text and and select a color from the text color palette. You can change text size, font, style, etc, by the normal "format" menu at the top of the screen. There are also typical drawing tools to choose from.

Symbols:

At the left you the screen, is the "Symbols Palette." After selecting a symbol on your page, click on a symbol in the palette and your selected symbol will change to the one you wish. The two left/right arrows at the top of the palette will allow you to scroll through hundreds of symbols, shapes, and pictures to choose from. The middle arrow will give you a list of categories in a pull down menu as a faster way to locate a symbol.

You can also type text onto a line to explain the relationship between symbols. Click right on the connecting line. You will get a text box. Type the word(s) you wish to appear.

You have probably already noticed that you can move the symbols around anywhere on your screen and the connecting arrows always stay with the symbol. You can also do some more organized arranging of symbols:

By clicking on the "Arrange" button at the top button bar, you will have some choices of how you want to arrange your symbols.

You have choices of tree chart arrangements (top down, left/right, etc)

Example:

This is a great way to create an outline after a brainstorming or clustering session.

Once the clustering has been done, click on the "Outline" button.

You can convert back to the tree or cluster organization by clicking on the "Diagram" Button. There is a different Button Bar on the outline screen. You can: Move topics and sub topics up or down a level. Add or delete topics. Change the Prefixes or Properties.

You can create links to an Internet site from any symbol in Inspiration. Click on to select the symbol you wish to link, make sure the text is highlighted. Pull down the "Utility" menu and choose "Internet." Then choose "URL Hyperlink..." Fill in as shown below with the Internet address you wish to link to.

After clicking "OK," and you will notice that the symbol text will now be underlined indicating that it is an active Internet link.

Double click on it and it should take you directly to the Internet site you have programed.

You will notice that each symbol when selected, has four red boxes, one in each corner. These each have a specific function. They are normally empty. If they have been activated, they will be filled in red. You activate the boxes by double clicking on the box.

Note Box: Double clicking on this top/left box will bring up a small window in which you can type in notes about the particular idea represented by the symbol.

New Window Box: Double clicking on this top/right box will bring up an new Inspiration window where a new set of linked symbols can be created.

Subsequent Links Box: Double clicking on this bottom/left box will hide all sub level symbols and links connected to it. This can be very useful if you are using this as a teaching tool (projected screen) by only showing the sub symbols and relationship when you are ready for the audience to see (keeping them focused on the idea you are discussing).

Zooming:

You can easily zoom in and out by clicking on the small or large mountains in the lower left corner of the window.

Printing:

If you have a large cluster of symbols, it may take up more then one page. You can have it fit on one page for printing along with some other options by pulling down the "File" menu and choosing "Print Options." Other options; printing hidden notes or subtopics, page ordering, page breaks, etc. (see below)