Technology Based Study Tools

Lynne Anderson-Inman and her colleagues (e.g., Anderson-Inman, 1999) have coined the term computer based study strategies to describe software and strategies that can support students as they read to learn, take notes in class, write papers, prepare for tests, and organize for school. Students use low-cost portable computers, which they transport from class to class, and a suite of software programs. The researchers have investigated the use of these strategies with a variety of different populations at the secondary and post-secondary levels including students with learning disabilities, hearing impairments, speakers of English as a second language, and at-risk students.

Strategies that support students as they read to learn, or read content-area information, include brainstorming, reading and note taking, remembering information, representing knowledge, and synthesizing information. At the heart of these strategies is the software tool Inspiration (Inspiration Software). This flexible program makes it easy to organize information by creating and modifying concept maps, webs and other graphical organizers, and outlines. The software doesn't teach students how to create or use these organizational and representational devices; rather it provides a tool that facilitates the ease with which they can be constructed. Furthermore, the software makes it possible for users to instantaneously switch between diagrammatic and outline views of information without retyping or rearranging information (for ideas, see Kight, 1998).

Research shows that students with disabilities often fail to use their prior knowledge to help themselves understand what they read or hear in class (Bos & Vaughn, 1998). The ease with which concept maps can be created makes Inspiration a good tool for supporting brainstorming and other activities that help students activate their prior knowledge before reading or studying new content. The program also can be operated in a "rapid fire mode" that permits the user to quickly type in ideas about a topic. These ideas are then assigned a node in the concept map without consideration of how they relate to one another. In a subsequent discussion or upon reflection, the user can organize the concepts by clustering them around subtopics and drawing links to show how they are related. Students can complete a brainstorming activity independently, or a teacher can create a concept map to support a whole-class brainstorming or a K-W-L (Ogle, 1986) activity.