| Thinkwave
Educator
By
Mitchell Levine
Although
a few New York City schools are still struggling to meet the October
2001-dated mandates, the vast majority of our districts now have
networks and broadband access capabilities which were only available
to higher education a brief time ago. Unfortunately, without enterprise
software capable of attaining the ultimate goal of complete interactive
communication between parents, students, and teachers online,
the $1.1 billion investment in hardware the Department of Education
(and the old Board of Ed.) has made is useless. In fact, many
institutions in the city try to provide the functionality of a
specialized utilities suite by simply jury-rigging Microsoft Office
components into a loose-fitting configuration as a stop-gap.
That’s
no longer necessary because Thinkwave Software has produced an
integrated, reasonably priced solution, their Thinkwave Educator
and Thinkwave Administrator applications. After downloading the
trial version of the Educator software, I was quickly able to
create a gradebook for a (fictitious) class in minutes, complete
with an attendance list, a syllabus, course objectives, grades,
reading lists, and more. With a single click, I then immediately
posted the entire thing on the Thinkwave Grades Online site. A
simple security code would allow parents and students to thereby
access crucial class information. Not only was the process easy
and relatively painless, but additionally also highly customizable,
even allowing, for example, non-traditional letter grading systems
like the new protocol introduced this year. Teachers with extensive
enrollments will greatly appreciate the powerful import/export
function, which is capable of subsuming current data lists from
popular database applications like Microsoft Access and Filemaker
Pro.
For
less than a hundred dollar initial investment, as well as an approximately
five dollar monthly fee to subscribe to the site, any educator
in either the public and private schools can reap the benefits
of the vanguard expansionism of the last several years of institutional
technology procurement, as well as set an example of how best
to use its attendant resources.
Although
I was not able to survey the Thinkwave Administrator product in
time for this review, which, according to the manufacturer, allows
for school and district-wide implementation, if it’s anywhere
near as seamless, feature-rich, and easy-to-use as the Educator
suite, I feel confident that it should be given due consideration
by all progressive 21st century education professionals. A free
trial version of both products can be downloaded at the company’s
site, www.thinkwave.com.#
Education
Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001.
Tel: (212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919.Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express
consent of the publisher. © 2002.
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