CET 720

Technology Product Review

By Sandy Nightingale

Product Description:

The product I chose to review is the Scott Foresman Science Practice & Assessment CD-ROM. The program enables students to practice science concepts in a multimedia environment. It correlates with the Scott Foresman Science 2000.

Uses:

Students answer multiple choice questions correlated directly to each chapter in the Student Edition using a Tic-tac-toe game format. The student’s responses are recorded in simple reports so that they can be used for study guides and to track progress. The program can be used at any time during the chapter – as an introduction to the content, as added practice during the lessons, and as an additional assessment tool at the end of the chapter. The software can be installed on a network to allow multiple users to access it at the same time.

Utility and Reliability:

The program is easy to use for the teacher and the student. It allows the teacher to add a new student, edit an existing student’s log-in information, or to delete a student from the class list. The teacher may view all of the questions available in the question pool for a given unit, print the question list, and exclude questions from the quiz. The teacher may also view the quiz results for a given student. It also tells the student additional information about the answer chosen. A student may choose to play against another student or against the computer. I question the reliability of the results, because if the student is able to get Tic-tac-toe in three moves, he/she only has to answer three questions.

Operating Requirements:

The software operates on IBM-compatible PC’s with an 80486 or Pentium processor (66MHz or higher) with Microsoft Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 or 98. It will also operate on Macintosh computers with a 68040 or PowerPC processor with 16 MB RAM and System 7.1 or later.

Evaluation:

The program is fun for the student because it is administered in a game format and it has cute graphics and sound. It is easy to install and easy for the student and teacher to use. I would suggest that the student needs to play the game several times with the questions changing in order to obtain more reliable results if it were to be used as an assessment. Because of my lack of confidence in its reliability, I believe that it would better be utilized as an introduction to the content or as extra practice, rather than an assessment.