::: The EdTech Advantage :::

After my training with PALM as a PETC (Palm Educational Training Coordinator), I began sweeping the web for educational programs to keep in my portfolio of Palm handheld programs that I would like to present about and share with other Palm-wielding educators. Needless to say, I found A LOT of educational programs — enough to satisfy my teaching needs. Among the many programs I discovered, the ones from Leading Step very much deserve special mention.

I had great first impressions of Leading Step’s programs. I like the suite-type of their software offerings: MathChamp!, SpellChamp!, Shape Up: Geometry, and Size It Up. All these programs (download here) have similar design and layout of buttons and instruction sets, and also similar activities and assessment “games”. This similarity leads well into familiarity, making the programs very easy to use with even the youngest Palm-toting students. The assessment “games” are not like typical drill games. They are actually fun to play! (I caught myself “trying out” the Shape Up and Size It Up games and ended up playing for close to an hour!)

So what else did I like about the Leading Step programs? When I was testing all the programs, I realized they were well-suited for one-to-one instruction. Since assessment problems are random, a students can thus experience a virtually unlimited set of practice problems in all the programs. Unlike paper workbook sheets, students will not run out of problems to practice on. And the programs provide immediate feedback – no need to wait for the teacher to check the student’s work. The programs also provide students with a lot of positive feedback. When they make mistakes, correct answers are presented and students are constantly encouraged to keep trying. Since students are working on individual handhelds, making mistakes doesn’t become to painful — thus the programs provide a safe learning environment — students can move on at their own pace. The programs are also highly customizable and can be configured to concentrate on particular areas of skills. And since all the programs monitor each student’s progress on specific skills, students and teachers are constantly provided with information on how students are progressing and areas they need to concentrate on are identified for them.

I loaded all the demos of the Leading Step programs in a few of our school’s Palm handheld sets used by 1st (Palm Zire 31’s), 3rd (Palm Tungsten E2’s) and 5th (Palm Zire 72’s) grade students. Their initial responses to the program were very encouraging. The 1st graders were actually very quiet when they were practicing their Math facts in MathChamp! The 3rd graders were more animated — they were quite competitive in using Shape Up and Size It Up. The 5th graders were very adventurous. They moved from one program to the other and shared their discoveries with classmates. Those who had a tough time understanding how a game worked were eagerly assisted by “Palm experts”.

All programs were easy enough for 1st grade students to use and wonderfully captivating for 3rd and 5th grade students to stick to for a long time. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, the similarity of the programs allows very easy use as students switch from one program to another. They all particularly liked the ability (and freedom given them) to change the color themes of two programs – SpellChamp and MathChamp. Personally, however, I would have wanted colors that were more on the bright and pastel side and ditch the darker color themes. The darker themes are not very low-res friendly.

One thing I also look at when reviewing Palm handheld programs is the quality of the product’s web site as well as the support provided. Leading Step “leads” very well in these aspects. When I first used MathChamp, I was confused by the varying numbers that showed whenever I tapped on an answer on the screen. Although there was no accompanying help file in the downloaded package, the ReadMe file points the user to the company web site for assistance. I then went to their web site, easily navigated with a few clicks, and found the answer to my questions.

Leading Step is tops in my list in the suite-type of educational programs. All their programs are very simple to use, yet robustly powered by a lot engaging of variations, games, and exercises that would easily capture and keep the attention of elementary students of all ages. The prices in their online store are also in the lower range of Palm educational programs. At $14.95 per license per title (except for Spell Champ, which is priced at $19.95), there’s no reason not to get the whole set. There’s a special bundle price for SpellChamp and MathChamp for $31.45, but no bundle price for ALL their products. It would be nice to have a full bundle price option.

My experience with Leading Step programs thus far has been very positive. I hope they continue to produce excellent educational products. There’s a lot of room for more excellent educational programs in the curricular areas of Science, Social Studies, Art, and Music. Now if they have programs for all these areas bundled into one package … THAT would be a power suite truly worth acquiring.

If you liked this post, subscribe to Wpdesigner's RSS feed.

Filed under: Educational Technology, Palm Handhelds, Professional Dev't.