[school-discuss] SEUL/edu ISO software evals

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

I just sent this message to the seul-edu mailing list, which is
where this work is to be done.  But I'm not sure that all the people
mentioned below are on that list, so I'm copying it here to be sure
they all see it.  Please excuse the intrusion.  Also, if you are a
teacher and would like to be of some real assistance in getting open
resources into the schools, please consider helping us evaluate
these applications for their applicability in a classroom setting.

--------------------------------------------

OK folks, time to start getting serious about this.  I have five
names listed as people who are willing to help evaluate software in
our Apps Index for inclusion in the ISO: Matt Jezorek (not a
teacher), Daniel Carter (not a teacher), Michael Williams (not a
teacher), Jason Neiffer (social studies and speech teacher), Mark
Schmitt (math teacher), Gordon Tremblay (science teacher), and Jeff
LeMieux (I'm not sure if Jeff's a teacher or not).

Gordon, we have 31 programs listed under "Science"
<http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/seulvw.pl?category=Science>.  Could

you take a look at them and see which ones seem likely to be useful
in a school?  If you're not sure, include it.  This is a preliminary

cut to remove programs that obviously have no pedagogical value
(which isn't to say that they're not useful; just not useful in a
classroom setting).

Mark, we have 44 programs listed under "Math"
<http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/seulvw.pl?category=Math>.  could
you do the same?

Jason, there are only 4 programs under "Social Studies"
<http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/seulvw.pl?category=SocialStudies>,
so I'll ask you to take a look at "Language"
<http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/seulvw.pl?category=Language> too.
Unfortunately, there are 63 programs there, covering a very wide
variety of categories that might fall under the general term
"Language."  Rather than try to evaluate them all, how about trying
to group them into subcategories that make sense (let us know what
those groups are, of course) and evaluate whatever programs fall
under "Speech."  We'll probably add your subcategories as regular
categories and drop "Language," as it's obviously too broad.

Michael, since your technology integration friend is willing to
help, could you look at "Programming"
<http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/seulvw.pl?category=Programming> (19

apps) and "Courseware"
<http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/seulvw.pl?category=Courseware>
(also 19 apps)?

Matt, Daniel, and Jeff, could one of you publicly volunteer (so the
others know about it) to look at "Administrative"
<http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/seulvw.pl?category=Administrative>
with an eye toward dividing its 57 apps into subcategories as I
asked Jason to do above?  For all three of you, could you grab onto
a teacher somewhere and shepherd them through the process of
evaluating one or another of our categories?

Folks, we need more people to evaluate these apps.  It doesn't hurt
if multiple people go over the same category--in fact, that's a good

thing that I hope will happen to all categories.  But we definitely
need someone to look at every app and evaluate it.  Let's get
moving!  (I'm going to try to grab a teacher friend to take part
myself, since I'm not a teacher either.)

--
Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant