Posted by
Waski_the_Squirrel on Friday, August 01, 2008 2:29:57 PM
As I begin to prepare for the upcoming year, it seems an appropriate time to introduce some educational software. With this article I will save you (or your school district) a small fortune.
Dr. Geo
This piece of software is only of interest to math and possibly science instructors. Anyone who has ever taught (or taken) Geometry discovered that there are a lot of rules in the subject. While they do eventually make sense, they are tough. You look at a static drawing in a textbook and try to make sense of it. If you had an adventurous teacher, you might have done constructions, but that was confusing too, especially for those without artistic talent.
Imagine if you could "grab" the drawings and move parts around. Imagine you could watch how all the angles and measurements change as you adjust the figure. This is the magic of
Dr. Geo. Sadly, it is not available to Windows users. However, if you have OS X or Linux, you're in business.
This time, I will confess that it is not as good as its main competitor, Geometer's Sketchpad. It has many of the same features, but it is not as user friendly. However, it is better than Geometry software found on graphing calculators. Of course, Geometer's Sketchpad is reasonably priced: $40 for a student edition and $130 for the full version. For outfitting an entire lab, Dr. Geo might be a more reasonable cost.
Moodle
I've mentioned on this blog that I have an ambitious vision for the future of education. I envision a lot more online education. Students come to school to do labs, take tests, for tutoring, but they spend more time learning from home at their own pace.
No software is as adaptable to the individual student as I'd like. However, online education is a reality. Right now, it's a niche market for homeschoolers and for courses students can't get in their own school. With high gas prices, I see the possibility of my vision for education coming sooner.
A popular option for online coursework is
Moodle. It was built on a constructivist philosophy: students construct their own knowledge. No matter your philosophy, it provides utilities for class discussion (forums), movies, a gradebook, handouts, tests, quizzes, activities, and there are many free add-ons for your own particular favorite feature. It is a popular on-line education system. It's used by universities and high schools because it really is easy to use.
The difficulty with Moodle is the same as any on-line software. It needs to be hosted on a good server. My computer could become a server, it could host a little, but it would not be up to hosting beyond my own classroom needs...maybe not even that. You need to set up the server or else pay someone to host it. That said, Moodle will run on any platform, and your students can access it no matter what sort of operating system they use.
The main competitor to Moodle is Blackboard. I had difficulty finding out the cost for Blackboard. From what I've read, a high school of under 3000 students will spend between $10,000-$20,000. I can't find a firm answer, so I'm giving the range I've read. No matter what, this is a big chunk of change, especially if the school just wants to try out the software.
Moodle is the better option, especially if the school just wants to try it out.
In the interest of full disclosure, I want to note that the state of North Dakota has made Blackboard available to all high schools. At the moment, Blackboard is what I use for my own online courses. I'm mostly satisfied with Blackboard and I'm not ambitious or rich enough to set up a Moodle server just so I can be pure open source.