School Zone Review 2001

Title: Student guides

Publisher:  Software Made Simple

Pricing information  Annual fee of £220 or individual guides priced separately.

Education News
National curriculum level Level 6 and above
Subjects and topics  Appropriate for teachers and more able pupils at Upper Keystage 2/3/4 for use within ICT.
Support materials  Teacher’s notes and exercises, Adobe Acrobat.
Special needs  not applicable
Review

All Schoolzone reviews are written by UK teachers
The software came in the form of a CD Rom. The user needs to explore exactly what is on the CD Rom as there are various options. Perhaps initial starting instructions would be helpful here for the benefit of impatient people! However, given time to explore the contents of the CD Rom, it becomes apparent that there is much to offer. In various folders, there are notes to guide the user with Access, PowerPoint, Excel and Word in most of their different versions. For example Word 6 up to Word 2000. Each guide is extremely well laid out with clear pictures of computer screens and easy to understand language. It is recommended that the program be run alongside the guide to enable a working comparison to be made. It is a good idea to read how to do something and then be able to put it into practice. An introduction to Windows is featured followed by the guides. Each guide starts off with basic skills and progresses to complicated, whilst still supporting the user. Teachers would welcome such guides for their own development, particularly during Nof training. The CD Rom allows the user to progress at their own pace.
In addition to the guides, there are also teacher notes. These would extremely useful to secondary teachers responsible for teaching ICT. Again, everything is laid out clearly, with screen shots and is easy to understand. Exercises for students are also included, which help students consolidate whilst applying their learning.

There are also OHP slides, which can be used with PowerPoint. These would be of benefit to anyone involved with teacher training or delivery of NoF training. The slides are produced to a high standard and would certainly be a time saver.

I feel the software is of most benefit to someone involved with managing ICT. They would have the responsibility for selecting the appropriate course guide and directing the student towards it. The manager could use the training materials to deliver OHP/ PowerPoint presentations and give exercises to follow up learning. Students could then use the guides independently at their own pace and return to the guides to review and revise learning. All the material contained on the CD Rom can also be printed out.

I feel this is a well thought out resource which would be of great use to ICT Co-ordinators or trainers of any kind.

This review © Schoolzone.co.uk ltd 2000