RE: suggestion for needed work.

["Marshal Anderson" <marshal@marshal.co.uk>]

> I could see a program that flashes pictures and speaks a word
> and then be
> prompted to spell it. The limitation is of course familiarity
> with a QWERT
> keyboard. In a lab setting, the picture comes up on the screen without
> sound, and the child spells it (with or without time restrictions). If
> he doesn't spell it right the first time, he is politly told it's not
> right and is prompted to spell it again. Man, what a trivial
> piece of code
> that would be :) I think we've got something here.

There are many examples of this sort of thing around - SuperSpell from
4mation is one. It wraps the process up in 4 activities including a
wordsearch and a sort of hangman thingy. It extends the concept by
presenting sentences (spoken from CDROM) to give the word context.

The real meat of a package like this is not the activity, it's the admin.
SS, for instance, provides 150 or so pre-set word lists linked to different
spelling rules, work groups and abilities. It also tracks and reports
results to the teacher and allows them to create and monitor their own
lists.

I think that's one of the more important aspects of modern edsoft - it
provides a wide range of configuration options (though I wonder how often
they are used) that allow an element of differentiation to be introduced,
and also makes the software usable over a wider ability range - i.e. if you
are going to pay $75 for a package you want to be able to use it with more
than on class.

Marshal