Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Draft:Builder versus Inspiration?

I'm considering Draft:Builder as a writing aid for my dysgraphic DS8 and am wondering if anyone here has tried it. We have Inspiration, but I haven't yet figured it out and my aging brain can probably only support one of the two. I'd be grateful for reviews of either/both to help me choose.

We don't have Draft:Builder, but my ds uses Inspiration. What type of challenges have you had with Inspiration? Have you looked at KidSpiration? We never used it, but it's the younger-child's version of Inspiration.

polarbear

I haven't done more than download Inspiration, so far - I'm trying to avoid learning more than one program. I've heard good things about Inspiration (it was recommended over Kidspiration by our point person at DS's school), but hadn't heard anything about Draft:Builder until DS8's psychologist recommended it.

CoastalMom, my info is several years old, so take it with a grain of salt! If I recall correctly, DraftBuilder was significantly more expensive than Inspiration, and it was a part of the Don Johnson software suite. I think Draft Builder allows the user to go one extra step in the writing process (outline -> draft), but Inspiration allows you to export your outline to MSWord, and once you are in MSWord it's relatively easy to change the outline form to draft paragraph form. Other than that the two programs seem to be very similar, with a few minor differences where and there.

If you've downloaded Inspiration already, I'd go ahead and give it a try. It's actually easy to learn and use

polarbear

Reviving an old thread....

We've just staring to test-drive Inspiration with DS10, a highly visual-spatial guy with major issues getting words out of his head and onto paper (looks good so far, but we'll see what the actual result is on a first project shortly). A friend who's a school-board SLP strongly recommended Draft Builder as *in addition*, rather than instead of, Inpsiration.

Her view was that Inspiration was great for taking their input and helping them turn it into a structured format they can work with. In contrast, Draft Builder was all about providing prompts to elicit the needed input in the first place, for many different kinds of writing.

Any with experience to confirm/ refute? Thanks!

Have you asked about a trial version of DraftBuilder? I'm curious about the type of prompting - prompts are good! I've spent my life prompting lol! So I would be very interested in seeing what type of prompting it does. Prompts are basically what our SLP worked with our ds on for years - and it *did* really *really* help.

polarbear