Blue Ribbon Reviews April 2006
By Linda Lindroth

Teaching and integrating technology into the curriculum can be a time-consuming challenge. This task just got easier. You'll love the practical approach to technology and corecontent support provided by these programs.

EasyTech
EasyTech by Learning.com is a web-based technology instruction product for students grades K-8. This is a great way to meet the requirements of NCLB, considering that an assessment of eighth grade technology literacy must be completed by next year.

Technology tutorials. EasyTech offers both the sequential instruction of technology literacy, activities for integration into the core content and a set of assessment quizzes. The technology literacy curriculum covers Computer Basics, Keyboarding, Graphics, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Graphing (see figure at right), Presentation Basics, E-mail, Web Browsing, Databases and Web HTML. Each unit consists of several 7-15 minute interactive tutorials, activities to practice the technology skill and a culminating assessment. The skill units are aligned to ISTE's NETS and state standards.

Each tutorial consists of instructional video and student input tasks to check understanding, with a Certificate of Completion at the end of each lesson to report their scores. Lessons are available in English and Spanish for ESL/ELL. The eighth grade curriculum is an excellent review of technology basics for teachers.

Teacher management. The School Coordinator screen makes it easy to create classes, import or add students and assign curriculum. Just click a tab to view lessons, see standards alignment and even preview the lesson in Student view. An EasySets tab adds one-click grade level curriculum and the readily available grade buttons allow teachers to individualize assignments across grade levels to meet individual needs.

Classroom tools include a Computer Lab Planner, Login cards and scope and sequence by grade levels. Reports showing class and student progress toward NETS standards are excellent.

For additional information, visit www.learning.com or call 800-580-4640. This is an annual online subscription service, per student. Please note that Spanish-enabled lessons require a small additional fee. Call for pricing.

Word Zapper
Spelling was never like this when I was in school. by Micrograms Software motivates students to practice spelling with a challenging, fast-paced game that my students love to play over and over.

In the game, students will "start engines" for a word zapper machine that zaps misspelled words as they move along a conveyor belt. The program has six levels. Level 1 is made up of Dolch Sight words and levels 2 through 6 consist of 1,000 words each at grades 2-6. Points are scored for correctly zapping words.

Once 10 words are missed, play moves to a Practice Session. Each missed word flashes briefly on the screen before the student types the word correctly. The speed of the flash slows each time a word is repeated, or it can be controlled manually. All missed words go into a personal "Focus List" and appear at random on the conveyor belt and in the Practice Session. The list holds 50 words and can be printed from the File menu for take-home practice.

Use the Options pull-down menu to Create word lists and save for student practice. Use weekly spelling lists, science or social studies vocabulary or even words from a class book study.

But wait, there's more! The Teacher Module records and prints a Summary of Student Work. Just enter classes, set options for play and set grading scale. Once created, the class list can be imported into additional Micrograms programs. There are also PDF files for the word lists at every level.

Visit www.micrograms.com to try a demo or call 800-338-4726 for more information. Win/Mac $44.95.

Linda K. Lindroth is Technology Editor and Web Coordinator for Teaching Pre K-8. She is also a Technology Resource Teacher in a K-5 computer lab in Lexington, KY.