Tutorial Inspiration Project: Zoo Field Trip Web

Definition: A concept web is a type of diagram which shows various relationships among concepts (according to http://www.netcore.ca/~gibsonjs/dict1g3.htm) . Inspiration allows teachers to create webs, graphical organizers, diagrams, and other visual representations of relationships.

Create a concept map showing animals that could be researched during a field trip to the zoo.

1) Set up your main idea:

• Add in your main idea by selecting the Main idea symbol.
• Find the school bus in the symbol palette (hold down the middle triangle on the symbol palette>choose Work-School>School and the school pictures pop up). When you click on the school bus, the Main idea symbol changes into the school bus.
• Be sure the school bus is still selected and click on the text box below the picture. Type "On our trip to the zoo, we saw. . ."

2) Set up your page title:

• Place your cursor somewhere above the school bus main idea and click. A symbol that looks like crosshairs appears.
• Click on the text only box (the second box down on the symbol palette under the oval circle).
• Type in the title "Our Trip to the Zoo" and adjust the font to Comic Sans (Format>Font>Comic Sans) and the size (Format>Size>24) to 24 points.
• Adjust the size of the text box to fit the title by dragging the corners (Careful! Do NOT drag the the diamonds in the middle of each line. The diamonds are for creating links to subtopics, not for resizing text boxes.)

3) Create your rapidfire links.

• Click on the school bus to make the main idea active.
• Click on the rapidfire link at the top of the page. A red lightning bolt appears.
• After the bolt, type the word "Giraffe" and hit return.
• Type "Lion" and hit return.
• Type "Zebra" and hit return.
• Type "Elephant" and hit return.
• Type "Monkey" and hit return.
• Type "Alligator" and hit return.
• Type "Peacock" and hit return.
• Type "Dolphin" and hit return.
• Rapidfire has created 8 links for animals you could see at the zoo. Position the circles around the bus so that they are evenly spaced.

4) Insert your animal pictures to take the place of the subtopic ovals.

• Select the oval that says Giraffe. The oval will have diamonds appear around the outside lines of the oval.
• In the symbol palette, click on the middle triangle, select Animal-Plant>Animal 2. Click on the giraffe in the symbol palette and the giraffe picture replaced the oval. Repeat this process for all of the other animals. You may need to look for the animals under the Animal 1,2,3 menu, or Birds1,2 or Sea 1,2.
• You may need to reposition the animals around the school bus so that they are evenly spaced. Or you may want to resize the pictures by holding down the shift key and without letting up on the shift key, use the mouse to grab the upper right corner and move the mouse toward the lower left corner.

5) Add text to the links:

• Click on the link between the picture of the giraffe and the school bus. A text box appears.
• Type a fact about giraffes in the box (for example: World's tallest animal)
• Reposition the text box by placing the mouse on the dot and dragging the dot to more evenly space the text.

6) Save your file:

• Select File>Save As command from the menu bar. Be sure to browse to your zip in the top bar and save the file with the name "Zoo".