Teacher's tool kit: Six software programs that could change the way you teach - Instructor 2001 Teacher's Tech Guide

Instructor, March, 2001 by Carol Holzberg

Today's educational software offers much more than just great curriculum content--it also offers teaching tools that promise to enhance creativity, address individual learning traits, and spark learning excitement. Here, we share some of the best: six programs with the potential to make teaching and learning in your classroom more dynamic, more efficient, and more effective.

1) Presentation PowerPoint 2000/PowerPoint 2001. One of the stand-alone applications included in Microsoft Office (see below), this user-friendly presentation tool deserves special mention because it allows students to demonstrate concept mastery in creative and enjoyable ways. Youngsters can design visually engaging electronic slide shows (consisting of any combination of text, pictures, sounds, animations, and video clips) to demonstrate how much they've learned and to share their projects with others. For teachers, the program can help introduce new concepts and facilitate review. Numerous project templates and clip art images, hypertext links to Encarta World English Dictionary Online and Encarta Encyclopedia Online, plus a built-in spelling checker offer all users control over the learning experience.

Platform, Office 2000: Windows 2000, 95, 98, NT 4.0; Office 2001: Power PC/120 or faster $159, Office 2000 Standard (Windows); $229, Microsoft Office 2001 (Macintosh); 1-800-426-9400; www.microsoft.com/office Grades 4 and up.

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2) Idea Mapping Inspiration 6.0. This powerful visual learning tool allows teachers and students alike to diagram ideas in numerous ways: make hierarchical concept maps, create problem-solving idea maps, show how everything relates to a core concept using web maps, and lay out a project using a storyboard. Educators can harness its tools to illustrate and test curriculum concepts, while students point and click through its kid-friendly options to demonstrate concept mastery, clarify thinking, and express ideas. There are dozens of templates to get you started, plus special symbol libraries containing over 1,250 colorful high-resolution graphics to facilitate curriculum integration. You can even set up live hyperlinks to Web resources. The program also includes an outlining environment (complete with spelling checker), to help users turn ideas into well-organized written documents. If you teach primary grades, you'll want to check out Kidspiration, the just-released version tailored especially to K-3.

Platform: Macintosh/Power Macintosh, Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0

Inspiration Software, Inc., $69; 1-800-877-4292;

www.inspiration.com

Grades 4 and up.

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3) Creativity Kid Pix Deluxe 3rd Edition.

The program that has been playing to rave reviews on classroom computers for years has just arrived in its long-awaited third edition. Like its earlier incarnation, Kid Pix fosters imaginative expression in young children. This openended multimedia toolkit features varied project environments, including Kid Pix for drawing and painting, Stampimator for animated play, Moopies for the design of animated pictures using animated rubber stamps and wacky brushes, Digital Puppets to create animated electronic puppet shows, Wacky TV for screening digital movies clips saved in QuickTime (Mac/Win) or Video for Windows (Win) formats, and SlideShow, where users create electronic presentations of Kid Pix pictures and projects. The program also allows teachers to design educational worksheets, test concept mastery, and develop number and letter recognition skills in early learners.

Platform: Macintosh 68030 or Power PC or Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000

The Learning Company, $19.95; 1-800-395-0277;

www.learningcompany school.com Grades Pre-K-3.

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4) Productivity

AppleWorks 6 (Macintosh), Microsoft Office 2000

Standard (Windows)/Microsoft Office 2001 (Macintosh).

Purchasers of iMacs for the classroom receive AppleWorks 6 (Macintosh), a collection of integrated word processing, spreadsheet/charting, presentation, database, and graphics tools under one desktop roof. Easy to use, straightforward, and packed with clip art, templates, a spelling checker and thesaurus, AppleWorks 6 is the productivity application of choice for Mac-using K-3 students. Children concentrate on document content because learning the program takes hardly any time. Older students and adults, however, would benefit from the added tools and features available with Microsoft Office, the de facto productivity suite of choice for both Mac and PC users. Integrating three stand-alone powerhouse applications (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) into one package that also includes an email/personal information manager (Outlook for Windows, Entourage for Macintosh), Office boasts spelling and grammar checkers, engaging WordArt special effects, a powerful table tool, tight integration with the Internet, password pr otection for documents, a wealth of electronic clipart, and cross-platform support.

AppleWorks 6 Platform: PowerPC (Macintosh), 24 MB system running OS 8.1 or later Free with purchase of iMac for education, $39 when purchased separately; 1-800-800-2775; www.apple.com/education