Inspired by Inspiration

I started using Inspiration software seriously for the first time to organize my thoughts for a paper I'm writing. It's amazing how being a student again is opening up my thinking on educational technology. I've always known theoretically that Inspiration is a good thing, but in writing this paper I found it to be an invaluable resource for brainstorming, gathering snippets of information from the web, reorganizing my ideas, and creating the outline for my paper. I suspect that many teachers would have a similar experience if they were in the role of student again. The common criticism I hear from teachers who have never really gone deep with Inspiration for their students is that the teacher just wants to get the kids writing, "Using Inspiration takes too much time... Everyone has to learn how to use it, and it slows down our writing process. The kids don't like using it." My response to this criticism is that the software is not being given a fair trial. It is true that since students are rarely asked to use it, that when a teacher does try it with his/her class, they do lose time to learning how to operate the software. If it were used consistently then the kids would know how to use it. As to the second criticism that it's more important to just "dive in" to the writing process, I beg to differ.