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Re: [seul-edu] ISO progress
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 01:14:03PM -0800, Jonathan Hughes wrote:
> I am not sure if it is just my bent in life but I would be concerned
> about giving teachers and administrators too much choice. If they are
> faced with 2-3 applications that do similar things, how will they choose
> which application to use.
Same as any user. Try one, if you're happy, stick with it. If not, try
another. If there are three applications that do similar things included,
presumably it is because each application has different strengths and
weaknesses. When there is no clear winner, it is better to include all
three and have the user choose than to let the user suffer with the
weaknesses of your arbitrary "best" pick.
> There has to be a way for
> the teacher to look at two similar applications and know which one has
> the best possibility of doing what they need it to do.
I believe that beyond the initial weeding out of "duds" there are no easy
ways around this. If a teacher's needs are not very particular, then no one
particular package out of three similar packages may outshine any other.
The teacher can safely make an arbitrary choice. But if the teacher has
special needs that are addressed by one package better than another, how can
we determine this in advance? We're saying "this is fit for use in
education and we know this because teachers are out there using it" but not
"this is fit for use for X, Y and Z" because we don't collect that kind of
info. Nor can I imagine it would be an easy task to run down the list of
possible needs for every particular kind of software for which multiple
choices exist and come up with a matrix for each package of how well it
addresses each point. But if you'd like to spearhead a project to produce
such a matrix, more power to ya. :)
Ben
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