The Leader in Visual Thinking and Learning

For more than 25 years, Inspiration Software^® has been developing award-winning visual learning tools to help people think and learn. The company's software is used extensively in schools and educational institutions worldwide. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., Inspiration Software's team is continually working together to create software that meets educational goals around the world.

"We have spent a quarter century committed to developing visual learning software tools that will help students build the thinking skills necessary to achieve at the highest levels and to become successful, contributing members of 21st century society," said Mona Westhaver, president and co-founder, Inspiration Software. "Our success is a tribute to the talented, creative educators around the world who use visual learning instructional strategies with their students every day."

Our mission
Our company strives to support improvements in education and make a positive difference in students' lives by providing software tools that help students learn to think.

Recognised commitment to excellence
Inspiration Software is dedicated to championing the growth and improvement of technology in education and creating software and support materials that build a solid learning foundation for students of all ages.

The company has been recognised for its accomplishments with several prestigious awards, including the EdNET HERO, PIONEER and IMPACT awards for making significant contributions to education and the education market.

Our flagship product, Inspiration^®, has earned many industry awards including four prestigious SIIA Codie Awards, most recently in 2007, and the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award for Best Reading and Language Instruction Software. Kidspiration^® won SIIA Codie Awards in 2006, 2005 and 2003 and two AEP 2005 Distinguished Achievement Awards, for most innovative educational software and the best educational software for reading.

The newest member of the Inspiration Software family, InspireData^®, has begun to acquire accolades as well. Winner of a 2007 Best Educational Software (BESSIE) Award, the visual way to explore and understand data was also a 2007 Codie Award finalist in the "Best Science Instruction Solution" category. In addition, InspireData earned a 2006 Seal of Approval from the National Parenting Center, as well as a 2006 iParenting Media Award.

Company history
Founded in 1982 by Donald Helfgott and Mona Westhaver, Inspiration Software had a focus on business software products. 1996 brought an exciting change — a new focus on developing Inspiration to meet the needs of educators and students. Inspiration Education Edition for the U.S. was released in 1997. To extend the power of visual learning to younger pupils, Kidspiration was released in January 2001.

In 2002, a growing interest from countries around the world prompted the release of International English editions of Kidspiration and Inspiration. In 2004, a French edition of Inspiration was released, followed closely by Inspiration and Kidspiration Spanish editions in 2005 and a Portuguese edition of Inspiration in 2007.

Committed to continually improving our products and meeting the needs of our customers, we created Inspiration for handhelds, releasing Inspiration^® for Palm OS^® in 2004 and Inspiration^® for Pocket PC in 2005.

The newest version of Inspiration—Inspiration 8—launched in 2006, featuring expanded visual capabilities, including a mind-mapping environment, plus increased support for writing.

In September 2006, our visual learning products were joined by InspireData, a tool for investigating, manipulating and analysing data. With InspireData, students age 9 to adult build data literacy skills as they explore and analyse data in science, mathematics and humanities. In September 2007, we released InspireData 1.5, with new and enhanced features to increase data literacy, including more than 100 content-rich databases, the e-Survey tool and database templates to jumpstart data collection.

In April 2008, the newest version of Kidspiration was released. Kidspiration 3, the visual way to explore and understand words, numbers and concepts, introduced exciting new visual maths tools to help students build conceptual understanding in numeracy.

To deliver an integrated, flexible learning experience and make Inspiration's visual learning tools available in a range of teaching environments, our products are optimised to support interactive whiteboards and Tablet PCs.

Learn more about visual learning techniques methods.