As I've been writing for Low End Mac,
I've used a variety of tools to help me get my job done. This is a list
of online tools I've found to be useful in teaching. Some of them would
be useful to small business as well.
Funbrain.com
Although primarily targeted at lower grades, Funbrain features an online quiz tool
called Quizlab that lets you write, administer, and score your quizzes
online. It is primarily designed for multiple choice quizzes, although
there are options for displaying and capturing open-response items.
Multiple choice items can be configured as practice tests, revealing
correct answers as you go, or as real tests, keeping answers hidden and
providing online and/or emailed scores to the teacher.
For me, I think it is best used for practice tests, although I wish
there were a few modifications to the interface. Among the minor
improvements which would improve Quizlab:
- larger fields for entry of questions and answers, so you can see
everything you've typed before submitting it
- the ability to clone quizzes and alter them for slightly different
versions (Quizlab can already scramble choices)
- download and upload text versions of quizzes for archival purposes
(if you cut and paste, editing is a pain because of embedded spaces and
tabs)
- mixed quiz types (I'd like to give 10 multiple-choice questions and
2 open response on the same quiz, for example)
The only real problem I've had with Quizlab is that sometimes our
proxy server stops responding (pretty much every day) or if we give a
quiz online anytime around noon, for some reason all of our Internet
connections bog down - must be a lot of people who surf high-bandwidth
sites around noontime in our district. This makes Quizlab or any other
high-stakes Internet activity unreliable and basically unusable in my
2nd or 4th period classes. I'm fairly certain this is a district
problem and not a Quizlab problem.
We sure as heck wouldn't be able to use PowerSchool; it'd be a
disaster laid at Apple's feet, and we've had enough of those to make
using Macs strictly a defensive position. Anyway, Quizlab is useful if
not perfect; if you've not done this sort of thing, take a look.
There's another similar service called www.Schoolnotes.com that some of our
other teachers use to build websites.
iTools
I love iTools. All my school
sites are based there, and nothing beats the simple drag-and-drop
upload and download built right into the operating system. I don't use
my mail account service yet, and I've only sent a few iCards, but iDisk
just rocks (when you can use it - in my district . . . you
can guess the rest, can't you?).
Several of our PC using teachers (and my wife) swear by www.homestead.com, which has
extensive site-building tools administered through your browser.
iTools' Homepage function is easy, but it's not nearly as flexible as
Homestead. I wish Apple would either rebuild Claris Home Page or ramp
up Homepage (online) to compete in the middle web-page building space;
they're losing education customers here, and their treatment of Claris
Home Page and HyperCard both seem to indicate that they simply don't
care about the growing base of experienced but not expert teachers on
the Web. (That means you want more than a plain-text-and-picture
website but you don't know HTML.)
Master.com
I learned about Master.com by
following a link from one of Low End Mac's surveys. I've built a class
evaluation form on it, and it works just great. It supports mixed
question types, statistical reports, downloading captured data (such as
people filling in email addresses to build mailing lists), and provides
graphical feedback to the site manager. There's a lot there.
I haven't used it long enough to find anything significant to
complain about, other than it has a rather technical interface and
setup procedure, which you can figure out if you just read everything
and pay attention. If you do evaluations or surveys, this is worth a
look.
If only they supported scoring of multiple-choice items....
Cafepress.com
Okay, this one I told Dan about. Basically, you upload some
graphics, and they produce on demand shirts, mugs, mousepads, hats, and
so on bearing your logo. Mark up their prices and you've got yourself a
little store. Here's mine: <http://www.cafepress.com/astroteacher/>,
and here's Low End Mac's: <http://lowendmac.com/store.html> if you want to
see some examples.
The good news is, it's easy to do and the products that I've seen
look like high quality stuff. The bad news is the base price is fairly
expensive, and unless you get a lot of traffic, don't look for a volume
discount.
How can you use this for school? Imagine a "I survived Mrs. Smith's
Biology Class" shirt sold as a fundraiser or a set of equations for AP
physics: "You can wear the shirt on quiz days," or a club logo, or
. . . see the possibilities?
Google
Who doesn't like Google? Who
doesn't use it? I used to be a big fan of multiengine Dogpile, and I've dabbled with Sherlock,
but Google is the search king right now. Take the time to embed a free
search tool on your site from Google. If you don't host your own
server, it's an easy way to go - and it helps get you indexed on
Google, too, I'd expect. Check out this page for instructions:
<http://www.google.com/services/free.html>
There's lots of other tools floating around out there. If you have
something that works for you, don't keep it a secret.
is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
