Artifact 7

In an internship I completed in my final year at Appalachian State University, I worked with a fourth grade classroom at Bethel School. My classroom housed two computers and various software. During this time, I experimented with much of this software and developed an evaluation of one program in particular. After evaluating and learning about this software program, I saw and participated in its practical use by teaching one of my students to use it.

This evaluation and the software itself will be used in my own classroom- I now know how to properly evaluate other software as it crosses my desk and the importance of software's ability to assess and measure student performance and deepen their understanding of the specific material addressed. I will now be able to judge software quality accurately.

This artifact addresses competency 10.6 in my evaluation of the learning resource of computer software for student use. The software evaluation also meets competency 13.1 because I found the software to enhance the understanding of my student in the content area of math and measure her performance through scoring and the advancement to different levels or retention to the same level. This Math Blasters software meets competency 13.2 by supporting the learning of children with special needs, be they advanced learners or learners in need of remediation through it's many difficulty levels. Students may advance if a skill is too easy for them or be remediated by staying with a certain skill until they have obtained mastery. Finally, my software evaluation meets competency 11.3 because I used the technology tool of the Math Blasters software program, and it is content specific to math.