Software - is it worth your district's money (and your students' time)?

School districts have significant challenges, with time and money being two of the biggest. As a result, it is important that the software you choose for your district offers the best possible value for the purchase price, and is the best tool available to maximize your students' learning in the limited amount of time you have with them.

Ohio SchoolNet, now eTech Ohio, had a software review project (SSRP) that is now, regrettably, inactive. The intent was to have Ohio's teachers use a standard software review matrix for the software they use and submit it to SchoolNet for inclusion in a review database. This would make the front line experts' objective opinions about the value of the software they used in their own classroom available for others to use when performing their own evaluations of software for purchase. The good news is that, even though the SSRP program is no more, there are several groups who have devised evaluation rubrics to help ensure you make the best possible software decisions.

Ohio SchoolNet's own SSRP Tool is still available on ERIC's website (an incredible resource in it's own right).

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) also offers it's own Educational Software Evaluation Form, as do other organizations such as SREB/EvaluTech with their own software review criteria outlined below.

Of course, your own teachers are still your most valuable resource for information on software that works - and doesn't. Encourage them to participate in conferences such as eTech's, and take all available opportunities to share with teachers in other districts. We all share the same goal, to provide the best possible education for our students, so there's no need for each of us to reinvent the wheel (to coin a phrase).

No bathrooms on the bottom...

Technology educators and administrators in the State of Ohio have the great benefit of an exceptional state-level support agency - eTech Ohio (formerly Ohio SchoolNet). This agency has a long track record of support for school technology initiatives, from it's inception as Ohio SchoolNet when it provided funding for districts to install network cabling infrastructure that began the explosion of K-12 technology programs, through the SchoolNet Plus program that provided funding for the purchase of student computers, to it's current incarnation that merges the K-12 technology role with other existing state agencies such as public television.

One of the key services provided by "the new eTech" is the annual State Technology Conference, one of the premiere events in the industry. Held in February of each year, this conference provides individual sessions in everything from technology management and leadership to assistive technologies for special needs students. And, of course, there are always notable keynote speakers.

I have been interested in oceanography and marine biology ever since taking up scuba diving during a trip to The Bahamas when I was 11. By 11 1/2 I had my scuba certification (I was big for my age; at the time you weren't supposed to be eligible for your certification until you were 15), and I spent a lot of time underwater for a lot of years. So, I was excited to learn that one of the keynote speakers for the 2008 conference was Bob Ballard: oceanographer, explorer, and "finder of the Titanic."

Dr. Ballard gave a very engaging presentation, and provided some very interesting insights into the impact technology is having in his field of expertise. While there was the obvious required technology, such as submersibles that allow humans to survive temperature extremes or descend well below the depths that could be tolerated by a scuba diver, it was technology's "remote access" capabilities that are now offering the most exciting benefits. After a very humorous account of a typical day before remote access, which could include a "commute" of several hours straight down in a cramped submersible with no bathroom facilities, he said that the technology that allowed him to remain on the topside research vessel (with bathroom)was a huge step forward for all oceanographers. The remote vehicle, carrying cameras and other information-gathering devices, could now make the commute without him while he stayed in the relative comfort of the mother ship.

The real impact of remote monitoring, however, is just now starting to be realized. Dr. Ballard described a technological world in which the data collection vehicle can be literally anywhere, and the top experts in any field can view that information real-time via High Definition Television (HDTV) and data monitors that can, if needed, exactly duplicate the environment of the researcher sitting in that cramped, "sans facilities" submersible. A submersible studying underwater volcanoes off Hawaii, for instance, can simultaneously provide realtime data to a top vulcanologist in Australia and a top marine biologist in France, with both having access to data equal to what they would have onsite - without the indignities.

Of course, we all know that the major technological benefit of HDTV is an improved viewing experience for Big 10 football games, but it's nice to know there are also minor side-benefits to the technology such as those described by Dr. Ballard.

Get Graphic - on the Cheap

In 1972, while studying the acquisition of science knowledge in children, J. D. Novack discovered the value of using simple, graphical representations to reinforce student learning. By creating a visual template, or scaffolding, to support the learning, knowledge acquisition improved. Over time, the variety of tools used to create this scaffolding came to be known generically as graphic organizers. Expanding use lead to increasing data that these organizers increased the speed of knowledge acquisition, depth of understanding, knowledge retention, even the application of the acquired knowledge to new contexts.

These tools don't only work wonders for students in all curricular areas, they work in management and leadership contexts as well. Without Novack's discoveries we may not have what seems to be the one universal element in all meetings: the wall-sized PostIT note. The reason it is so universal is that the graphic charting element works so well for educator knowledge acquisition, too. We use it to identify major concepts, subconcepts, contributors, and interrelationships to help understand complex systems and project how systems change will impact the whole - including areas that are sometimes not obvious at the first review.

The 5 main types of graphic organizers are:

- Star/Web
- Chart/Matrix
- Tree/Map
- Chain
- Sketch

Let's look at how two organizer types, chain and sketch, can easily be created with a technology every district already owns - word processing software. Our district happens to use Microsoft Word, but I do not know of any word processing software that does not offer a similar capability to produce this type of output (yes, including freeware).

The chain type offers us a chance to look at graphic organizers as the simplest level: sequencing.


HOW TO MAKE TEA (with sincere apologies to my English friends)

Put fresh water in cup
Put cup in microwave
Set on high power for two minutes
Take cup out of microwave and put teabag in cup
Let steep for 3 minutes


Timelining is a "step up" from a simple wordprocessed sequence list that can easily be accommodated with a word processor, it's line draw features, and a little ingenuity.

Ohio has State Standards for Education that include mapping to help with spatial awareness and other learning areas. You can also easily integrate a technology component by having students use the drawing capabilities of your district's word processor to create a neighborhood map. All programs easily create lines, squares, rectangles, circles, and ovals necessary to give at least an adequate representation for lesson plans that include basic mapping.

To Blog or Not To Blog...

Blogging is one of those technologies that it is unfortunate the students embraced before the educators realized it's potential. Social blogging, and the media focus on it's negative aspects, created a stereotype of blogs as uneducated ramblings focused on weekends of inebriation, rife with misspellings and bad grammar. To make matters worse, young bloggers often revealed more about themselves than was prudent, with the potential for disastrous results. Added to this, of course, are examples of students publishing negative information about district teachers or the district itself.

The negative reputation of blogs has been difficult to surmount, even as a growing number of teachers are finding creative uses for blogging in the educational environment. Certainly there are students who are much more motivated to author blog entries than to complete a simple wordprocessing assignment. The shared development opportunities, in which other classmates or even students from other countries, allow for some very creative group dynamic scenarios. As we are able to offer more positive examples of blogs, such as group collaboration on a creative writing projects, language projects that involve students in another country, or history projects in which class members assume the roles of specific characters and "discuss" the events of another time, or even something less creative like a district technology director using a blog to offer technology integration ideas to teachers, we will be able to get beyond this negative stigma.

To use the old standard, "the train has left the station" and our students are already on board. It's time for us to join them by finding creative ways to apply this relatively new technology in our classrooms.