our students at school. Most of what has been listed on our computers, up until last year, was total garbage in my opinion. Some of them looked like they were still running on the DOS operating system, if not made for Commodore 64! So now that I've dated myself terribly, lets get down to business. Crumby programs that serve no conceivable purpose beware... you are about to get a severe rubricized slap down!I'm not quite sure where I will begin. I may ask students which of our programs are the most popular, or least popular. Which programs they go on when they have free time or w
hat programs they find the most useful. I'd be interested to hear their responses. While my grade 5's are not as techno savvy as my grade 7's were, there are definitely a few who are old hands at word processing, power point slide shows and even some animations. I bet they would actually have some worthwhile suggestions that these software creators could take some lessons from.
I think there is a politicized aspect to this as well. For example, we get new curriculum. Teachers on the new curriculum team then "consult" with a textbook company and voila! We now have textbooks on the Trillium list which curiously look exactly like the curriculum that was written.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to say that there is a huge ethics question here, but it happens. I wonder if getting educational software approved requires a complex series of horoscopes and numerology. Perhaps that is why you are seeing dated programs.
Dan