From: "K-12 TechWatch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: K-12 TechWatch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Fri, 17 May 2002 14:12:30 -0400 Subject: ***K-12 TechWatch*** May 17, 2002
K-12 TechWatch is sent to you as a free news service providing exceptional school technology resources and tools for professional educators. Over 100,000 readers! Don't forget to pass this email along to your colleagues! Friday, May 17, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------- This week's award winning resources of K-12 TechWatch are brought to you by the Reader's Choice Awards - submit your top picks for K-12 handheld computer technologies. http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/surveys/editorial/rca/handheld/ ----------------------------------------------------------- Inside this issue... I. NEW TEXT-TO-SPEECH SOFTWARE COULD BE SOUND INVESTMENT II. SCHOOLNET CAPTURES DATA SHOWING YOUR STUDENTS' PROGRESS, NEEDS III. VOTE FOR YOU FAVORITE HANDHELD IN THE READER'S CHOICE AWARDS IV. RATE VENDORS WITH THE NEW BUYER'S GUIDE RATING SYSTEM ----------------------------------------------------------- I. NEW TEXT-TO-SPEECH SOFTWARE COULD BE SOUND INVESTMENT ----------------------------------------------------------- Incorporating blind, dyslexic, and learning-disabled students into mainstream classroom activities is getting easier, thanks to a new generation of affordable, high-tech tools that convert electronic text to audio. The software allows your students to hear the contents of electronic documents spoken aloud instead of having to read them from a computer screen. Screen-reading software is nothing new. Products such as Freedom Scientific's JAWS and GW Micro's Window-Eyes have been around for some time. The problem for educators has been that neither of these options was designed with the needs of students—or the budgets of schools—in mind. For the full story, visit: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=3720 ----------------------------------------------------------- II. SCHOOLNET CAPTURES DATA SHOWING YOUR STUDENTS' PROGRESS, NEEDS ----------------------------------------------------------- Writing weekly lesson plans can be an overwhelming chore at times for elementary school teacher Barbara Foster, but technology is making it a less onerous task. Instead of reviewing hefty documents containing the academic standards her pupils are expected to achieve, Foster can go to her computer and find them online. With a click of the mouse, she also can review her earlier lessons to make sure she doesn't cover the same ground twice. Hunter is among several schools in four states that have begun taking advantage of a new internet program designed to organize a wide range of information—from standardized test scores and attendance figures to lesson plans—and put it all within easy reach of a teacher or principal. For the full story, visit: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=3707 ----------------------------------------------------------- III. VOTE FOR YOU FAVORITE HANDHELD IN THE READER'S CHOICE AWARDS ----------------------------------------------------------- Help us help your colleagues! eSchool News invites you to submit your top picks for K-12 handheld computer technologies. In return for your participation, we'll eMail you a FREE copy of our special report, "Big Power in their Little Hands: How handheld computers are transforming education" by Joe Slowinski. This handy special report outlines many of the technologies and resources that exist to help teachers integrate handheld computers into K-12 education. The deadline for the final voting is Friday, May 24. All responses will be kept anonymous. Results of our Readers' Choice Awards for handheld technologies will be published in aggregate online and in our July 2002 issue. For more information, visit: http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/surveys/editorial/rca/handheld/ ----------------------------------------------------------- IV. RATE VENDORS WITH THE NEW BUYER'S GUIDE RATING SYSTEM ----------------------------------------------------------- The brand-new, online School Technology Buyer's Guide from eSchool News is free, and it's designed to make your life a little easier. Effective purchasing requires sound vendor evaluation, and we're aiming to expand your intelligence-gathering abilities by a level of magnitude on that score. For each of the 3,500-some companies listed in our guide, we're inviting each of the 150,000 school leaders who read eSchool News to perform a vital service for their fellow educators. Whether your response is positive, neutral, or negative, other educators will value your honest opinions, which will help them make better purchasing decisions. Review each company you're familiar with by using the automated "star system" that's now part of our online Buyer's Guide. Just answer seven key questions on a company and our software will assign the company a star rating--from five stars for the best to zero for the worst. Give it a try. To rate a company: 1. Go to http://www.eschoolnews.org/buyersguide 2. Do a search for any of the 3,500 + companies listed inside the guide 3. Select the company from the results of your search 4. Then click on "Rate this company" in the top right-hand box inside the" Company Rating Information" box 5. A pop-up window will appear. Answer each of the key questions listed there with a "Yes," "No," or "N/A" (Not Applicable). Then, enter your eMail address, and click "Submit Now." Be assured your eMail address will be used for quality control measures only unless you indicate otherwise. That's it! Why not check out our online School Technology Buyer's Guide today? Just point your browser to http://www.eschoolnews.org/buyersguide. ******************************************* For digest instead of individual postings, send the message: set k12newsletters digest to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe, click and send (no body or subject: required) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] K12 Newsletters mailing list is a service of Classroom Connect - http://www.classroom.com Archives for K12 Newsletters can be found at: http://www.classroom.com/community/email/archives.jhtml?A0=K12NEWSLETTERS **********************************************************
