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Educational Product Reviews [Note: the Educational Product Reviews page has been archived. New material will not be added to this page. It will remain archived indefinitely.]
AlphaSmart 2000 Currently we are quite enamoured with the AlphaSmart 2000. This is a low end laptop-like machine. It has one function: word processing. As such, it does not do anything else. But, for the price, schools can get a half dozen of these into students' hands for what they would pay for a single high-end computer. The primary use of computers is word processing, anyway. When students use AlphaSmarts, the PCs are freed up for more intensive work. All text typed into the AlphaSmart is stored in static RAM. It can easily be hooked up to a printer to spit out the text raw, or the output can be sent to a computer with a word processor to perform more intensive formatting. It works fine with either a Mac or PC. The AlphaSmart is tough and rugged. It can be dropped and abused and still works fine. Rumor has it one of them got run over by a UPS truck and still booted up, but we couldn't confirm this... Teachers will feel comfortable letting students carry them home to do work off campus. The AlphaSmart is being purchased in large quantities by districts around the country who are finding them useful for keyboarding classes. Also, special ed. departments are buying them for dyslexic children and others who have a hard time using pen and paper. Check out the AlphaSmart 2000 at its home page: www.alphasmart.com
Copyright © 1999, EduQuery
Free Gradebook from ThinkWave Educator Express You can't beat the price on ThinkWave's Educator Express. It is freely available at ThinkWave's web site (www.thinkwave.com). It's full functioning, too. The Educator Express offers seven main menus to choose from. The Home menu, the default one when you open the program, offers easy links and visual cues to such things as "Today's Events," "Tip of the Day," and "Upcoming Assignments." The "Students" menu offers database input for students and their info. Included here is a box for student e-mail and parent e-mail addresses. One of the neat functions of Educator Express is the ability to send progress reports directly to parents via e-mail. The "Classes" menu lets you enter class name, term, location, grade type, and related info. "Tests and Assignments" offers options for type, grade type, weight of grade, date assigned and due, and curve. The "Attendance" menu offers a graphical calendar and charts for inputting absences. The "Results" menu calculates all the grades for you, while the "Reports" page offers several options for many different types of reports. We were most impressed with Educator Express's good looks and easy feel. This is obviously a program designed for Windows 95 and higher, without the clunky interface we've seen on older grade book programs. The help function was good, too, offering details on setting up e-mail accounts in other programs, which we felt was useful for novices.
Educator Pro A more feature-packed version of the program is offered, the Educator Pro. The Pro version offers a lesson plan maker, a calendar, student grade analysis, a seating chart maker, and a random small group maker. More flexibility is offered in the Pro version, and we thought it was well worth the $59.95 upgrade fee. The Calendar is easy and intuitive to use. It offers monthly and weekly views, and allows easy printing. Due dates, meetings, and end of term dates are easily added to the calendar, which can keep track of everything going on in the school. The Lesson Plan maker allows easy creation and retrieval of lesson plans. Other options include one assigning all classes for the day the same lesson plan, eliminating the need to duplicate the one plan for all classes. In short, the Educator Professional is likely the last gradebook program you will ever want. It is powerful enough to meet and exceed all your needs.
Recommendations: Both versions are the best we've seen in electronic gradebooks, and it looks like ThinkWave has a winner. We suggest you download the free version, then upgrade if you like it and want more powerful features. Educator Express The best part of this program was its price: free. This program is EduQuery Recommended. Educator Pro Function filled, powerful, easy to use. This program is EduQuery Recommended. Copyright © 1998, EduQuery
Wheel mice roll into town Once you try a mouse with a wheel, you'll never want to go back to the old kind again. In this article, we review the two leading models that are taking the computing world by storm. Technology directors should take steps to ensure students have access to this trend when making new system purchases.
Radically designed, this mouse is a beauty to behold and interesting to hold. It has a total of 4 buttons, including the wheel which doubles as a middle third button. After extensive use of this product, we were impressed with the overall design and workmanship of this excellent mouse. The pro: The overall feel of this mouse is excellent. It feels good to use. We enjoy its silky smooth motion. Logitech has always had good software to accompany their products, and MouseMan comes with excellent control software that makes the mouse completely programmable. We found the option to allow the arrow to jump to highlighted buttons to be quite useful in eliminating repetitive motions. Punch the wheel and it will allow you to drag down and across screens.The wheel is responsive and reacts well to the touch. It provides a very subtle clicking action that provides excellent feedback. The con: This is a big mouse. You need room to maneuver it. Also, it may not be thoroughly suitable for younger, smaller hands. The Microsoft mouse seems more fit for a larger number of hands. The fourth button is there for double clicks, or anything else you might program it to do, but we have never used it. Seems superfluous to us and we could live without it.
We've seen Microsoft mice last for years and years in that most demanding of environment: the public school classroom! So we were eager to try the newest incarnation from a long line of winners. The pro: This mouse does not depart much in overall design as its ancestors. The traditional curved, bulbous shape has always felt great in the hand, and the addition of the wheel in the middle simply adds greater functionality. The wheel is responsive to the touch. Scrolling action by dragging the mouse accomplished after pushing the middle button is smoother than the Logitech's. The con: The software for the Microsoft mouse lacks the same functionality that is in the Logitech. The arrows don't jump to the highlighted button automatically. After using the Logitech and then switching to the Microsoft, this feature was sorely missed. Movement, although quite good, is not quite as silky as the Logitech. The wheel doesn't click like the Logitech, and while this difference is subtle, we preferred the Logitech's wheel.
Recommendation: This is a tough call because both products are so good. However, due to the superior software on the Logitech side, and the overall feel of the mouse in general, we give the MouseMan our nod. EduQuery Recommended: Logitech MouseMan Copyright © 1998, EduQuery
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