Inspiration“ Tutorial 1. Welcome to Diagram View With an interface that’s identical on both Macintosh and Windows platform, Inspiration is easy to use in any setting. Inspiration opens in diagram view where we process, organize and prioritize information visually. The Diagram toolbar across the top offers easy access to key program features. On the Symbol palette, there are over thirteen hundred symbols to visually represent ideas and information. Along the bottom, the tools on the Formatting toolbar let us instantly change colors, fonts, and styling. 2. Adding new symbols A. Main Idea—Diagram View opens with one symbol centered on the screen. It’s easy to get started—we just type! B. Create tool—There are many different ways to add new symbols in Diagram View. You can build off the main idea by clicking the Create button. This adds a linked symbol in the direction we choose. C. RapidFire‘ tool—Another way to add symbols is with the RapidFire tool. RapidFire allows us to capture ideas and record them quickly—it’s great for brainstorming. With a symbol selected, click on the RapidFire button. The red lightning bolt indicates the tool is turned on. Type and then hit enter. Continue doing this until all your ideas have been typed in. Click the RapidFire button again to turn it off. D. Point and type—Point and type is an easy way to record thoughts that don’t yet fit into our current focus. Just point anywhere on the diagram, click the mouse button, and start typing. A new symbol is automatically created but not linked to any other symbol. E. Using the symbol libraries—Inspiration’s symbol libraries provide a wide variety of pictures and images to represent concepts and ideas. We can also create symbol libraries and fill them with images from clip art, the Internet, and other programs. There are several ways to locate the perfect symbol. The Select Library button gives us a category list. Each category has several libraries. i. Drag and Drop—Using drag and drop, we can simply grab a symbol from the palette and drop it into our diagram. ii. Resizing symbols—We can manually change the size of any symbol in our diagram. Just click on the symbol and drag any corner. 3. Linking symbols—We’ve been working with symbols, the shapes and images that represent our ideas. Let’s look now at links, the lines and arrows that connect our ideas and tell us more about the relationship between them.
A. Link tool—The Link tool makes linking symbols easy. Click the Link button to turn it on. Click the symbol where the link will start and then the symbol where the link should end. Click the Link button again to turn it off. B. Draw link—We can also use the mouse to draw links between symbols. Click on one of the diamond handles in any symbol and drag to the symbol you want it to be linked to. When the connection points appear on the second symbol, release the mouse and drop the link there. C. Link text—When selected, each link has a text box. Adding text on a link helps define the relationship between two symbols. Just click and type. 4. Adding notes text—Notes let us add details or start the writing process in Diagram View. A. Note tool—You can add text to a symbol. Select the symbol and the click the Note button on the toolbar. The new note is ready for text. B. Note Quick Control—When we add a note to a symbol, a Note Quick Control appears. The Quick Control can be use to open and close the note by simply clicking on the icon. C. Detach note—We can easily move a note to any open place on the diagram. When we first select a note, the gray handles show the note is attached. As we drag the note away from its symbol, these handles change color. When detached, we can move the symbol and note independently. To reattach a note, drag it close to the symbol until the boxes fill gray. 5. Adding hyperlinks A. To web page—We can insert a hyperlink to a web page simply by typing the Internet address or we can format selected text as a hyperlink. We could even add a hyperlink to an email address. To add a hyperlink, select text and click the Hyperlink button on the toolbar. Here we’ll select Web site and type in the URL. The text in our symbol now contains a hyperlink. B. To file—To tie research and other resources into projects, we can add hyperlinks to any file of any type. Clicking Select File lets us navigate to the file we want to attach to our document. 6. Switching to Outline View—So far we have been expressing our ideas in a visual format. Inspiration also has a fully integrate Outline View. This means that every diagram instantly translates into an outline, and then back again, with one click. In Outline View, Inspiration structures the work into a traditional hierarchy, building the foundation of a written project. Our symbols are now topics and subtopics. The notes text we added in Diagram View appears directly beneath its topic.
Just like in Diagram View, all the tools we need are readily available. The Outline toolbar across the top offers quick access to topics, notes, hyperlinks, and more. Running along the left side of the outline, the control columns make it easy to organize information. Quick Controls allow us to control project notes, subtopics, and recorded audio with a click of a mouse. And, the handy, accessible options on the Formatting toolbar invite us to customize our work. Finally, the Zoom tools let us adjust the size of our outline on screen. A. Topic tool—Add a topic by simply clicking where you want the topic to go and then clicking on the Topic button. B. Subtopic tool—Add a subtopic by selecting the main topic it will go under and then click the Subtopic tool. C. Subtopic Quick Control—We can use the Subtopic Quick Controls in the control column to hide and show our subtopics. 7. Adding notes text—Notes text in Outline View allows us to expand on ideas, or actually start writing a paper for report. A. Note tool—To add a note, select a topic or subtopic then click the note button. B. Note Quick Control—Sometimes it’s helpful to hide notes text and work with only the higher-level organization of the outline. To hide a note, click to Note Quick Control for that topic. Notice how the Quick Control has changed color. This shows that there is a hidden note for that topic. Click it again, the note reopens. 8. Organizing ideas in the outline A. Right tool—As we review our work, we may discover that a topic should really be a subtopic. To change the hierarchy, select the topic and click the Right button. You can then click the Left button to move it back out. B. Move topic—We can easily move topics around to rearrange the outline. Just select the topic to be moved and drag it to its new location. The black line shows where the topic will drop. Notice that the subtopics moved too. 9. Returning to Diagram View—As we organize and develop our outline, Inspiration instantly translates these changes in Diagram View. Click the Diagram button to return to Diagram View. Now we can see that all of the changes and additions were made in Outline View are reflected in the diagram. 10. Organizing ideas in the diagram A. Arrange tool—If we want Inspiration to automatically arrange our diagram, we can use the Arrange tool. Click the Arrange button. The standard configuration is Top Down Tree but other options are available. B. Zoom tools—The Zoom tool in the lower left corner allows us to make our diagram larger or smaller on the screen.
11. Formatting the diagram A. Symbol colors—Color helps distinguish ideas and identify groups of related symbols. The Formatting toolbar has everything we need to instantly change colors, fonts, and styling. You can change the fill color, line color and text color by clicking on the appropriate button. 12. Changing Application Properties—Under the Utility menu is the Application Properties where we can customize the appearance and performance of Inspiration. Here you can turn off or on various Inspiration functions. A. Using audio i. Talking Interface—The talking interface increases accessibility for all learners by automatically reading the text in program menus and buttons. When on, we simply hold the mouse button over a tool on the toolbar to hear its name read back to us. ii. Listen Tool—With the Listen Tool, we can hear our work read aloud. Click the Listen tool to turn it on, then click a symbol or note to hear it read. iii. Record—We can add to our diagrams and outlines by recording words and sounds. Click a symbol, go to the Tools menu, select Sound and Record. Once a sound is recorded, an Audio Quick Control appears on that symbol. Just click the Quick Control to play the sound. 13. Final touches A. Spell tool—Click on the Spell button in either Diagram or Outline view to spell check the entire document. B. Help system—Here is the place to find answers to any remaining questions. C. Page Setup and Print—Customize printing jobs under Page Setup. Change layout, margin settings and add header and footers.
Adapted from Inspiration“ one-hour tutorial www.inspiration.com