SEUL: Educational Software

[EAMorical@aol.com]

Just some thoughts on getting a list of educational software together.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I ask kids how are computers being used at
your school. It varies all over the place. This was several years ago, but one
highschool student told me they were being used for keyboard (I guess teaching
typing) and for word processing. In another school where I know the teacher of
the computer lab, keyboard is being taught at either the kindergarten or first
grade level. I'm not sure if the lab is used k-4 or 1-4. For 5-8 the computers
are located in the classrooms. The computer lab is set up with 30 Apple
computers (class size) networked for easy software upgrades only. No internet
access due to lack of phone lines. This is similar to many of the schools.
Very expensive to retrofit for internet access.  Several months ago I got a
chance to see the lab and a demo of one of the programs used. A student would
type in a word and hear it pronounced by the computer. I think we could
duplicate this with just writting a simple interface and utilizing the UNIX
dictionary/spell checker and a speech synthesizer (the software map lists
several possibilities). Comments on this assessment appreciated. We need to
get a list of the software desired together, which grades each is appropriate
for, and how can we provide it.

Bob