Requirements educational programs must fulfill (from journal article)

[Roman Suzi <rnd@sampo.karelia.ru>]

hi!

I think it can be interesting for educational software authors.

Below there are some requirements which eduware must met to  be
adopted.

(Please note,  that  MS  software  mostly  doesn't  meet  these
requirements while Mac programs like Claris do).

----------------------------------------------------------------------
(excerpt from "Informatics and Education", 7, 1998)

The requirements 
of
educational computer programs
[for Computer Science lessons]

by G.Kravchenko and V.Tsalyuk,

(very loose, very  shortened!)  translation  and  additions  
by R.Suzi


Methodological requirements:

1) the program must demonstrate basic concepts of the  studying
area. It must not be overloaded with too many features.

2) it is desired that the feature  set  could  be  tuned  by  a
teacher to better suit each  student  group  and  the  teaching
process

3) the program must be real (not demo) and  could  be  used  to
fulfill students needs for information processing. That is,  it
must be able to be used in student's individual work

*4) User interface must be near to the  industry  standard,  so
the student will  be  easier  integrated  in  the  after-school
professional life.

It means:
- pull-down menus
- multi-windowing
- use of mouse

N.B., the interface of educational software MUST BE  in  native
language.

5) Built-in well-structured context help system

6) The educational program must be  able  to  work  under  some
script  (or  macros)  so  the  teacher  could  make  demos  and
tutorials

7) Stability and  security  of  software  in  the  class  room.
Exe-files must not be corrupted by user actions  or  be  easily
replaced by copying in no time.

8) There must be textbook/exercise book support, which  present
material "from  simple  to  complex".  Professional  books  and
reference guides are not suitable!

Economical/juridical requirements:

1) software must be legal
2) software better be cheap

Hardware requirements:

1) program must be able to start from DOS  [ heh! - what about loadlin;-) - R.S.]
2) it must use memory and other existing hardware efficiently
3) program must be usable by keyboard alone

Software for computer science lessons include:

1) Text editor
2) Data base management system
3) Spreadsheet
4) Graphic editor
5) Programming systems with IDEs
 - Turbo Pascal
 - FoxBase

---------- my additions below --------

Authors also note, that the programs they use aren't  specially
suited for school needs. (I have  not  mentioned  any  software
titles because it is specific to Russia)

Authors also note that MS software doesn't suit school needs due
to overbloatedness and overfeatureness...

It means, that we are stuck in DOS! Which also means,  that  it
will be not so hard to switch to Linux if there will be most of
the  programs  for  computer  science  fulfilling   the   above
mentioned requirements.

I must add to the last section:

6) Internet/Intranet connectivity:
 - web browser
 - email program
 - irc ;-)
 - telnet

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

It can be seen that these requirements are for  developers  and
decision-makers.

BTW,  open  source  programs  has   almost   NO   problems   on
juridical/economical side.

For example, existing Gnome apps  (Gnumeric,  Balsa)  are  good
examples  of  educational  software.   (I   have   heard   that
localization is very easy with Gnome apps).

Please, forgive the authors for their 'diehardizm' on DOS. They
are realists: our schools have  lots  of  XTs  and  i286-i486s,
where there is nothing else but DOS and sometimes Win 3.1.


Sincerely yours,
Roman A. Suzi

If somebody decides to publish it somewhere on the web, please,
correct my English and put due acks to the authors of the cited
paper. (I don't pretend to ack. me as a translator).

 -- Petrozavodsk -- Karelia -- Russia --
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