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March 15, 2003
Quick Picks
Clues in Crime
Emphasis: Forensic science and critical thinking.
Grade level: 8-12. Platform: Mac and Win CD.
Price: $89.99; lab packs and site licenses available.
Publisher: Duke TIP/Eduscreen (subsidiary of erroyo); (888) 825-3643
Clues in Crime teaches students the scientific processes involved in locating and gathering forensic evidence at crime scene investigations. Composed of 10 short video lectures, the program introduces young scientists to evidence collection procedures and scene reconstruction techniques for analyzing clues such as hair, fibers, fingerprints, and tire treads.
The lecture series begins with a segment on Physical Evidence, evolves into more complex analytical tasks, such as Crime Scene Investigation, and culminates with students solving a simulated murder. In this final unit, kids practice their analytical skills using a simulated crime scene, where, after scouring for clues, they're quizzed on the types of tests and packaging methods they would use to collect and evaluate evidence.
Students can navigate easily among modules and online activities that test forensic skills introduced in video lectures. They can then apply what they've learned to one or all of 11 labs included in the accompanying workbook, which features hands-on activities that let young scientists put their skills to work using materials found in most homes or schools. For example, kids are taught how to use superglue fumes to find and preserve fingerprints left on smooth metallic surfaces like soda cans.
Teachers will appreciate the program's unique offline interactivity, which includes a variety of analytical writing prompts requiring research-based essay responses. Each year, Clues' academic partner, the Duke Talent Identification Program, evaluates student mail-in submissions of their analyses, awarding gold, silver, and bronze level certificates for exceptional problem-solving skills. The only limitation, however, is that the program is designed primarily for single-student use. Hopefully, future versions will be built for collaborative work.
Evaluator: Mike Brown, director of the Coastal Studies and Technology Center at Seaside High School, Seaside, Ore.
Destination Reading
Emphasis: Early reading. Grade Level: Pre-K-3.
Platform: Web-based or Mac/Win CD.
Price: $435; lab packs and network versions available.
Publisher: Riverdeep/The Learning Company; (800) 825-4420
Destination Reading is a comprehensive reading and assessment program designed for easy integration into the early learning classroom. Developed by reading experts, this standards-based offering addresses emergent literacy concepts, phonemic awareness, coding, and comprehension, and is helpfully organized into two grade-specific courses-K-1 and 2-3-that together add up to 485 interactive, language-rich activities.
Upon selecting a course, young readers can choose from animated, music-filled units entitled "Silly Stories," "Jump Rope Rhymes," or "An Inventor's Life" that mark a path to discovery.
The program is built to help reinforce literacy concepts and features a wide selection of reading genres, from nonfiction to poetry to real-world language activities. For example, "Print in Our World," a unit from Course I, teaches word recognition within everyday contexts by taking emergent readers on a shopping spree where they click and drag items on their grocery list from the store shelf into a shopping cart. A more advanced version of this task in Course II adds writing skills. As students select groceries from shelves and move them to their shopping list, these objects then transform into printed words. Additional activities encourage students to write science fiction stories, find synonyms within a TV game show context, or listen to a talking book. However, some writing assignments, such as composing sentences and stories, will need to be printed and graded offline.
On-site training accompanies the purchase of a network version of the program, which includes administrative features that allow teachers to screen and diagnose reading skills, track progress, and assign follow-up activities using blackline masters.
Evaluator: Iris Obille Lafferty, Ed.D., educational consultant and researcher.
Scholastic Red
Emphasis: Professional development. Grade Level: K-12 Teachers.
Platform: Web-based with on-site training.
Price: $399 per teacher per course.
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.; (866) 888-5392
Scholastic Red is a professional development offering for teachers that combines on-site training with online instruction. Customizable to meet the needs of both small and large school staffs, Red begins with a site visit from Scholastic reading consultants who train lead teachers to mentor other educators enrolled in Red's Web-based courses.
Red's online curriculum component effectively helps educators put teaching principles into practice. The series consists of nine courses designed to bring teachers from across the curriculum up to speed on the literacy skills outlined by No Child Left Behind: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Each course begins with a warm-up exercise that illustrates what text looks like from a student's perspective, e.g., a passage is presented without punctuation to simulate the experience of a reader struggling with fluency. Teachers then move on to lessons that introduce methods of teaching specific skills, such as building vocabulary or understanding phrases to aid fluency and comprehension. Many of Red's helpful lessons incorporate multimedia demonstrations, including short video and audio clips of reading experts modeling best practices and reflecting on the effectiveness of their teaching strategies. Courses culminate with standards-based lesson plans that allow teachers to immediately put into play the ideas and concepts learned. Participants will also appreciate opportunities to ask follow-up questions and further investigate literacy concepts using Red's monitored discussion board.
Evaluator: Jeffrey Branzburg, supervisor of instructional technology for the Lawrence (N.Y.) Public Schools.
Unitedstreaming
In this age of movies on demand, teachers and students will welcome having a video library at hand to enliven lectures, reports, and presentations. Now with unitedstreaming, they can bring curriculum-related video right to their desktops. With United's clip database of over 1,500 educational videos, ranging in length from 10 minutes to 97 minutes, and over 15,000 brief concept clips, users can make selections from a rich viewing library either by downloading video files or via live streaming.
Easy to use and intuitively designed, the program allows users to access video clips on anything from Pilgrims in New England to the Northern Lights, searching by release date or subject and viewing entire programs or just short clips. Educators can create their own playlists after searching clips by keyword, grade level, or state curriculum standards. For example, teachers looking for video of the South American rain forests can preview only those clips that correlate to the specific grade level standards they are teaching.
Unitedstreaming is a flexible research tool, accessible from a Web-enabled computer with a high-speed Internet connection or by downloading clips to a CD for viewing at any computer station. Teachers using a TV monitor for whole-class presentations will need a scan converter or video projector, however. Additionally, copyright applies to United Learning's content library, so users can save their video-based projects only as long as their subscription remains current.
The program comes with extensive teachers' guides, blackline masters for several subjects, and excellent customer support. Additional features include closed captioning for many clips, while a Spanish translation is currently in the works.
Evaluator: Jamie Keller, a California Reading Specialist and classroom and movie-set teacher in Berkeley, Calif., and other locations.
Emphasis: Cross-disciplinary. Grade level: K-12.
Platform: Streaming video for Mac and Win.
Retail price: $995/year elementary school; $1,495/year high school.
Publisher: United Learning; (800) 323-9084
Dana
Emphasis: Cross-disciplinary.
Grade level: 3 and up.
Platform: Palm OS version 4.1. Price: $399.99.
Developer: AlphaSmart; (888) 274-0680
When the first AlphaSmart was introduced a decade ago, it was a simple word processor for entering and editing text, and then transferring work to a computer. The company's Dana device-part AlphaSmart, part PDA-provides exponentially more capabilities, offering a low-cost yet high-power solution for writing assignments, data collection, and personal information management.
Unlike earlier models, Dana runs on the Palm operating system, which supports thousands of applications, probes, and more. Students can easily enter data using either a stylus or full-size keyboard, synchronizing it with a Mac or Windows computer via USB cable, or printing directly to a USB- or Infrared-enabled printer.
Also setting Dana apart is its wide monochrome LCD touch screen, which is 3.5 times the size of a typical Palm device. A special Clipboard Mode lets users rotate the display 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise, an ideal feature for students who need to enter information while standing.
Constructed from a polycarbonate material that can withstand the rigors of field trips and backpacks, the sleek two-pound unit comes with 8MB RAM, an adequate amount for text processing but limited when it comes to running and storing other applications (two expansion slots are available for adding more memory and programs). A unit lasts about 25 hours before having to recharge it-over five times longer than most laptops.
Unfortunately, Dana Admin, an application that allows teachers to disable features like deleting programs or beaming during tests, costs extra. Moreover, Dana costs twice as much as the AlphaSmart 3000. Thanks to its new Palm OS platform, however, it delivers more than twice the computing power.
Evaluator: Carol S. Holzberg, Ph.D., educational technology specialist.
Stagecast Creator 2.0
Emphasis: Programming; multidisciplinary.
Grade level: 1-10. Platform: Mac/Win CD.
Price: $99.95 includes two licenses; lab packs and site licenses available.
Publisher: Stagecast Software Inc.; (877) 782-4322
Stagecast Creator is a programming tool that lets students create virtual worlds and characters in a "sim," or simulated environment, using drag-and-drop tools. Kids can start building their sims using a prepopulated selection of characters, objects, and backgrounds, or design new ones of their own. A versatile, open-ended program, Stagecast Creator can be used in any classroom where students are working to develop their visual problem-solving skills.
To get you started, Creator comes with sample sims that illustrate how the program can be used to teach probability, prime numbers, food chains, geography, music, and more. In the science classroom, for instance, kids can build an ideal habitat for an animal they're studying in class, and then compare their creation to the real environment in which that animal lives. More advanced activities might engage students in building a video game to show how bees behave in nature. Creator's applications are many, since sims can also include words, sounds, numbers, and mathematical operations, while the characters that populate these digital worlds can be instructed to walk, fall, turn, and react to other characters and objects.
Learning how to use Creator does take some effort, but the task is made easier by a detailed and well-organized tutorial. The program even includes more advanced programming features, such as a random function and subroutines, for older students, and users can post and share their original educational sims on the Creator Web site. While graphics are not as sophisticated as those used in commercial video games, for many users, the ability to create original worlds will compensate for that shortcoming.
Evaluator: Paul Fleisher, middle school teacher and author of several children's books.
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