Education Up Close

The use of technology in classrooms is important. Using PowerPoint, doing online activities, and browsing the internet grabs the students’ attention and makes them more excited about learning. Choosing software and deciding how to use it in the classroom is challenging for teachers. It requires a lot of time and planning in deciding what will be appropriate and useful in your classroom. There are several steps that are involved with evaluating software and hardware tools for instructional purposes. The first step in evaluating tools for the classroom is to make sure the software and hardware meets the system of requirements, is appropriate for the students’ age group, time requirements, and costs. In order to see if the programs will work for the educator, there are websites, such as the Teaching Today site, that show tables on how to decode the system of requirements for the software. Educators can learn about their computer system by going to windows, then clicking on system, and then clicking on system properties. The next step is to see if it is appropriate for the students. In order to see if it will work for the educator’s students, he or she will need to see the student age range that is given in the software maker. Once educators find the software that is appropriate for their students, he or she will need to figure out how much time each student has to work on the computer. The next task is to make sure the program is affordable.

Once the educator has completed those tasks, he or she will need to go into further evaluation in order to make sure the software suits the teacher and the students. First, the educator will need to make sure that the software states the concepts and skills adequately, meets state regulations, and to see if the tools are available online and for printing. The next thing teachers will need to do is evaluate the instructional design. The educator will need to see how difficult the instructions are, check if there are any learning aids, see how the material is given to the students, and determine if the students would enjoy the program. The last task is to evaluate multimedia considerations. The educator needs to be familiar with the program in case the students have questions, have documentation and technical support on the program, and make sure that the software won’t cause any technical problems, will be useful for class assignments, blogs, and presentations. Teachers who follow these guidelines will be able to use software tools successively in the classroom.

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/30