July 12th Thursday

So today we learned about instructional software and there seems to be alot of different products available, especially on the Internet. It was very informative to be able to review two software programs today. The first one I reviewed was Creature Feature and it was designed to increase visual, auditory, and attention skills specifically for students with severe cognitive disabilities. The program can be used for cause and effect training or for reinforcement for good behavior. I thought it was cute to be able to pick your creature and then see a funny animated story about it. A switch would work very well with this game. It seems very easy for students to play this program. And also, the program records the number of prompts each student needs to play the cause and effect game(click mouse or switch and object moves). I think this program is very basic and the teacher cannot choose levels for each individual student, but it would be a fun and useful program in a class of students with moderate to severe autism.

The second program I looked at, I was not too impressed. It was Hip-Hop reading and it looked like it was put together by amateurs instead of a company. It was direct instruction on phonics and the directions were not always clear. The students had to put together a sentence on the first page to determine the level to start on. And then as they worked through the program, they could not go back to redo a lesson, and they could not skip forward if they knew the information. The teacher could not even pick the level to start to student on. Also the sentences did not make sense, for example: Pat bat mat. So if the sentences do not make sense, they should not be in sentence format. I think they should just be a series of words with no period. Now I think it's ok to have small sentences for beginning readers but I think the sentences should make somewhat sense. For example what is wrong with: The cat is fat. ??? (the students would previously know how to read the and is)

So I think software is great for students but I think they should offer settings for the teacher to change and options to pick for individual students.