
2008 Inspired Teacher Scholarship winner: Kathie Thuillez, sixth grade social studies teacher at Fort Settlement Middle School in Sugar Land, Texas, wanted to end a challenging unit on economics with a creative, memorable project. She had her students use Inspiration to create diagrams to demonstrate their learning and summarize major economic factors of production, types of industries and economies. Taking advantage of Inspiration’s hyperlinking capabilities, the students’ webs linked to information about events affecting current economic conditions as well as definitions and examples of terms. With visual learning, Thuillez’s students were able to delve deeply into understanding the complexities of economics and use their projects as study guides for the unit test.