Did you know that as an educator who values the power of visual learning you are a part of a huge worldwide community? Over the years, we have received applications for our annual Inspired Teacher Scholarships for Visual Learning from Australia, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, Lebanon, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. In fact, Inspiration is currently used to help more than 25 million students around the world think and learn across the curriculum. And that wouldn’t be happening without the innovative teachers who know how graphic organizers and other visual learning techniques can help their students build critical thinking skills.

I believe in the power of visual learning and thinking and it has always been my goal to support its use in helping all students learn and achieve their highest potential. In 1996, when we changed our corporate focus to education, I was amazed at how rapidly you adopted Inspiration and came up with creative ways to use it in the classroom. I also quickly saw that elementary teachers of younger students were looking for a similar way to combine the power of technology with visual learning in a way that would meet the needs of the youngest learners. So in 2001, we launched Kidspiration to support visual learning and thinking for students ages 5-10. Almost instantly teachers were using Kidspiration to help younger students build early literacy skills by expressing themselves visually and recognizing the connections between pictures, words and meanings. We knew the software had the potential to produce creative student work, but we are amazed at what was happening in classrooms around the world.

We have seen examples of kindergartners – barely five years old – becoming first-time authors by using Kidspiration to write and publish their own picture books. In other elementary schools, students are using Kidspiration to both learn about a topic and integrate the most current technology into their classroom projects. For example, the winner of this year’s Inspired Teacher Scholarship for Visual Learning for Best Project using Kidspiration, Judy Ezra, and her third-graders at St. Andrew’s Priory School in Honolulu, used Kidspiration to brainstorm and plan a podcast on Ancient Egyptians – the school’s first ever! We may have developed the visual learning software, but you and your colleagues are taking it to the next level and using Inspiration and Kidspiration to expand the horizons for your students in ways we never imagined.

The examples of your creative use of our visual learning software that we have seen over the years combined with the many, many conversations we have had with you at conferences and in your classrooms started us thinking about the next software tool that we could offer you for using visual learning in all areas of the curriculum. We recognized that there was a need for a data analysis tool that would allow you to use visual learning instructional strategies to help your students discover meaning in data – and, ultimately, develop strong data literacy skills.

So, in the most recent development in 25 exciting years, we discovered that the educational research and development lab, TERC, was working on developing a software tool to support data literacy and we collaborated to publish InspireData in 2006. We launched the data analysis tool at NECC in San Diego and the “buzz” around it was incredible. Our booth was full to overflowing with conference attendees who wanted to learn more about the next development in visual learning software. It was so exciting for me and for the rest of the team at Inspiration Software to watch the momentum build around the newest member of our product family.

Not surprisingly, you have also quickly transformed your enthusiasm for the launch of InspireData into practical classroom applications. When we announced the 2007 Inspired Teacher Scholarships for Visual Learning in March – less than nine months after the debut of InspireData – we had numerous applications for the Best Project using InspireData award. High school juniors and seniors in the winner Will Bohrnsen’s class at Groves Academy in St. Louis Park, Minn., went outdoors to collect samples of water and invertebrate life from Minnesota lakes and streams and then used InspireData to analyze the data.

So, as you see, not only are you now part of our Inspired Learning Community, you are a member of a large worldwide community of educators who are advocates for the use of visual learning in the classroom – and, in some instances, outside of the classroom as well!