Hi Charla,
The Brainchild Study Buddy sounds really intriguing;  I'm going to have to check this out!

I'd certainly stronly encourage you to try out Inspiration.  I love the way it gives students a way 
to organize their thoughts and ideas.  It's basic function is as a brainstorming tool.  You enter 
your idea and then just hit 'Rapid Fire' to keep adding your brainstorms.  Then, the kids can 
group their ideas in categories, they can indicate relationships between the ideas and start 
adding details and subtopics to the ideas they want to use.  Then, the students take their ideas 
and can write their paragraph/essay. For example, we'll do a 'vacation' topic and the students 
will just record absolutely everything they can think of for places they've been.  Then I have 
them choose their top 3 and start to add details (or notes) about that place or event. When they 
transfer the data to a word processing document, they have 3 paragraphs practically written.  
The response is often something like, "You tricked us into writing an essay!" It's great because it 
was done in small chunks so kids didn't feel overwhelmed and it all fits together because the 
outline kept them focused.
 Sometimes, I will start off by giving them the outline and then having them fill it in. For 
example, if you're doing research on a country, you could give them the subtopics of economy, 
government, culture, education etc.    
As you can tell, this is just a really basic overview.  The Computer Based Study Strategies 
(CBSS), developed through CATE at the U of O, are a series of lessons designed to use this tool 
to help kids with a variety of tasks (textbook notetaking, synthesizing information, vocabulary 
study etc.). If you send me an address, I'd be happy to get you a copy.  We also have designed 
these for  use with the Palm.

Hope that helps!
Marilyn 

Marilyn Williams
6th Grade Language Arts/Social Studies
Kennedy Middle School
Eugene, OR

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eales, Charla" <Charla.Eales at doc.mo.gov>
Date: Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:21 am
Subject: [Technology 943] Re: Handheld discussion day 3
To: The Technology and Literacy Discussion List <technology at nifl.gov>


> We use Brainchild Study Buddy in our classrooms.  It seems the students

> like it because it fits in their hands and looks age appropriate and

> with earphones no one knows what they have in front of them.

> The sales person we deal with will bring in the unit and the content

> cartridges and allow the staff to look at it and see how it correlates

> with the curriculum.  You can view the web version and some lessons @

> www.brainchild.com.

> 

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