Week Seven: Educational Software

This week, I am pondering educational software. Good software can be an essential and indespensable component of the teacher's toolbox. There are many, many different types of software that can be used in education. It is also important to know the difference between the most basic types of software - application and system. Application software allows the user to perform specific tasks on the computer. Systems software is the software that commands a computer or operates it (Goldberg, 2011). Though there are different types of software, the heart of my discussion will be pertaining to educational software. I have chosen the web-based educational software program called Study Island to review. As mentioned above, Study Island is a web-based software program, available for a fee to schools and districts. At its heart, it is designed to tutor students in their particular state's core content. The program is aligned, for example, with Kentucky's Core Content. The software gives a written lesson on a topic within a subject for example "cause and effect" within Kentucky pre-KCCT subject of Reading. It also offers options for the new common core standards, as well as math, science, and social studies areas of study. After the student has read the lesson for the particular topic, he is then given a brief quiz for which he receives immediate feedback for each answer in the form of a "wrong" or a gold star. The parameters for a student to pass are set by the teacher as long as the administration allows this function. I set my passing parameters to 70% which would be considered proficient by Kentucky Standards. Once a student passes with a 70% on a topic, he/she receives a printed out blue ribbon certificate and may open the game option. The game option allows the student to continue with lessons and testing but in gaming mode. The gaming function is meant to increase student interest in the program and I have found that it works. My objective in using Study Island was to identify weak areas for response-to-intervention students as identified by the assessment program, ThinkLink, (from Discovery Education). I then programmed lessons for students in Study Island which correlated to the identified weak areas in the ThinkLink. At the end of the programming and student usage, I implemented a probe in ThinkLink to see if any gains were made with the use of Study Island. Surprisingly, there were some visible gains. Once the third ThinkLink test of the year had been given, I did see a very clear relationship between Study Island programming and ThinkLink results. Some students (as many as 2-3 students in each grade level with which I worked saw some "above average" gains" in the number correctly answered. There were several students who progressed from Apprentice level of performance to Proficient level. At least two students progressed from Novice level to Proficient level. There are some definite considerations when using this software program (or any other educational software program for that matter). First of all, one must be aware that the repetitive nature of this program may be come tedious after a while. If a student is struggling too much to earn a reward, it is helpful to set the passing parameters down to allow the student to experience a victory. This usually rebuilds enthusiasm for the program. It may be a good idea to create periodical incentives for great performance on the program. Some students may struggle with the independent reading portion of the program, but there is a text-to-speech feature on the program as well as options to adjust student difficulty. I believe that educational software offers a viable alternative to learning for students who may not respond to other classroom interventions. I believe that most educational software programs can be successfully used with students as long as one is proactive concerning interest-level and aware of the ability and frustration level of the student users. Credit for information concerning software goes to Dr. Cristine Goldberg, The University of the Cumberlands.