It is not often that I get frustrated looking for good tools with which to teach. I often find inspiration in many places; colleagues offer their ideas, television (thank you MythBusters), and the internet usually mean that I don’t have to re-invent the wheel for material.
But when it comes to good, computer-based modular concepts in chemistry I come up short. For the past several days I have been scouring the internet’s darkest regions (past the 10th Google page of hits) and have not found appropriately structured content in chemistry. I have found numerous sources of interactive modules for K-8 education, mostly in English or Math. Where is all the science?
Looking further into the matter, I started delving into what tools are offered for authoring quality online content. Since EChemCLASS is a small company and I am still only teaching part-time, I sought out the cheapest programs (read free) I could. There are several very good programs that have potential for good content authoring. For example there are many Moodlers out there. EXE and CourseLab also offer programs that can provide rich content. Microsoft Learning also provides a free bit of software for educational content authoring. But all of these programs suffer from the “you get what you pay for” bug. EXE for example does not like Windows 7 and you have to be running Firefox (an older version it seems). Moodle requires knowledge of how servers communicate and how Windows 7 doesn’t communicate with Moodle. Microsoft’s package does a splendid job except for a few vital problems such as no font support and an insanely strange organizational scheme for storing your media content in the course, and of course, it only works as shown if using Internet Explorer.
It is not a matter of the software not talking to the LMS systems (okay, so the LMS we use at EChemCLASS is Open Class which doesn’t have SCORM compliance, yet). It is a matter of needing to know how to make rich content in the authoring software. To do that, one needs to purchase the gold standard in authoring software in Adobe ($299.99 for Captivate using the educators discount, $1799 for the E-Learning Suite). With budgets being tightened in this fiscal climate, I don’t know how many districts are able to afford site licenses for their teachers to develop content.
So what do the poor need to do? What teacher’s have done for a long time: make due with less. But for me the complications arise in my sad lack of programming skills. Yes I did take a computer language in college - C++. Now ask me how to write a program in C, even though I got an A? It seems the use of HTML and Java allows us to make amazing content but I don’t know enough HTML and no Java (except that in the mug on my desk).
So this aforementioned frustration is well depicted in the graphic. To be good online teachers we need to be like Inspector Gadget. But our gadgets keep coming from Sanford and Son’s salvage yard.
So if you know HTML, XML, Java, or any of the host of languages out there---put it to use making educational software that really is easy to use and works.
