Digital Content for Teachers

46 b. Digital Content for Learning Teachers face many difficulties when selecting appropriate digital content for a particular educational goal at the classroom level. Part of the complexity is due to the many titles available, with different pedagogical strategies and design features interactivity, ease of use, on-line help and language choice. There are many sources of review information for teachers mostly in English. The most helpful seem to be those reviews written by teachers working in similar contexts because the most difficult issue is that of determin ing if a given software title will help a teacher achieve the desired result in hisher classroom. Reviews are also a handy source for gaining knowledge about more general features of a particular piece of software: its robustness, whether it is both educational and entertaining for students, whether it is well designed, and if it is worth its price. These are all important criteria when it comes to the actual decision of buying. Because of the need to acquire proficiency and to gain and share experience during the first years of teacher training, a carefully selected set of about a dozen pieces of educational software, for both primary and secondary education, might be preferable to a larger number of titles. For this purpose, software titles that can be used through many grades and that already have strong communities of users, classroom examples and other resources are already available in many languages. Some of these are productivity software that can also be effectively used as learning tools. An example of this would be the use of spreadsheets to teach mathematics, and the use of word processors to teach creative writing. As teachers become more confident with technology, they will demand additional software titles to work with more specific concepts and content material in their classrooms. The use of software in the classroom should be made as easy as possible for teachers, particularly at the initial stages when self-confidence in the use of technology is at a low level. For example, it is advisable to accompany software with classroom notes, including specific and meaningful examples of use, lesson tips, and orientation about how to organize student work. Evaluation procedures should be included. Also, it is necessary to provide teachers with enough copies of the software licenses and the learning aids manuals and guidelines to work with the entire classroom at the same time. Even though many times teachers might assign only a few students to the computers, copies of the materials should be available for the whole classroom. If Internet is available, it will be useful to help teachers participate in discussion lists with other teachers from similar realities i.e. same county. Using these lists, teachers will be able to ask for help, discuss their classroom ideas and learn, reassuringly, that many other teachers share their fears and have similar questions. Although all these seem to be natural uses of Internet, the Enlaces experience showed that teaches are rather resistant to participate in these type of lists, and there is a need for additional effort to engage them in these activities. The software industry is continuously providing new titles and upgrading existing ones. Therefore, teachers need permanent advice for classroom applications, which can be provided in part by the ICT Coordinator in the school a specially trained teacher – see Appendix 2 or by special web sites, some of which are listed in the Appendices. A few examples follow: § The Becta http:besd.becta.org.uk software database is searchable by subject, key word or by grade and contains information such as title, publisher, price, summary, format, etc. for each software. Its TEEM site contains teacher evaluations, case studies and information provided by the publis hers. Its information is in English. § Similarly, the software database in http:www.educarchile.cl is also searc hable in different ways; each content has a comprehensive record with information for the teacher. Its information is in Spanish. There are several organizations universities, parent associations, magazines interested in educational software evaluation, but using different judgment criteria. Some of these criteria and organizations can be found in [50] and in the BECTA site. 47 Teachers might more readily use software or at least start using software that already has a community of practitioners with whom they can interact, share ideas and solve problems. Examples of software with a community of educational users are: Primary Education MicroWorlds http:www.micromundos.com is extensively used in Costa Rica and in many schools in the United States, Brazil and other countries. It can be used in literacy, arts and in all grades for mathematics and science projects. Teachers use it in almost all subjects. It is available in Spanish, English and other languages. KidPix http:www.kidpix.com offers creative painting and story animation for primary schools. It can be used in arts and early literacy. It is available in Spanish, English and other languages. Secondary Education Cabri Geometre has a large community of users and associated research in both primary and secondary education. A long list of Cabri sites in different languages and countries can be found at http:www.cabri.net Appendix 4 contains a short list of some of these software and their related web sites as well as sites that hold databases with software descriptions. Teachers already more experienced with software can try to develop, together with their students, their own titles, mostly for their own uses. It is frequent to see in schools homemade CDs produced by a class using a variety of software tools for programming. New web generation tools are constantly reaching the market, offering simple-to- use software platforms. Comprehensive programming environments: Director, DreamWeaver and Authorware from Macromedia: http:www.macromedia.com . Graphics design and sound edition software: Photoshop or Illustrator from Adobe: http:www.adobe.com c. Internet Content Even if Internet is not available on a large scale at the beginning of the ICT Program, it is advisable to include the provision of relevant web-based content into its design. Internet has by now a vast amount of resources in most languages but only part of it is relevant for education in general and even less for activities related to a particular curriculum. Also, where indigenous cultures are present, it might be relevant to produce content that is specially tailored for students from these cultures. Given the necessity to provide Internet content that would be relevant to teachers and students, many countries have embarked in the construction of Internet “Educational Portals” to address this need. See for example: § Argentina: http:www.educ.areducarindex.jsp § Chile: http:www.educarchile.cl § European Schoolnet: http:www.eun.org § Ireland: http:www.scoilnet.ie Given the costs and complexities in implementing a national educational portal, and the advantage of sharing a common language, a few South American countries are working to establish an alliance to share content and software platforms among their portals. This may help them to focalize on producing content that is either not available or that has a special meaning to their curriculum i.e. culturally relevant content.