The Florida Department of Education has published the Florida Educational Software Catalog 1998-99. This is a collection of top educational software nominated by teachers in the field. For each piece there is a brief review and an indication of what Florida competencies the software addresses.
There are several really cool things about this catalog. I'm just so pleased that The Florida Department of Education has taken on this project, published the results for all to see and even put up the information on their web site:
http://150.176.23.142/edtech/esc.htm
Once at that site you can click on a link to download a full text of the catalog in PDF format and/or link to a University of Central Florida site that has the full text of the catalog plus a searchable database of the catalog.
Once you see the Catalog you'll find another cool thing. This was truly a cooperative effort with the DOE Office of Educational Technology, the Instructional Technology Resource Center for regular education (UCF/ITRC) and the Instructional Technology Resource Center for special education in Florida. They came up with a quality product that came in on time for teachers at the beginning of the year. Florida teachers can spend supplementary textbook funds on this software list.
Finally, Eileen Pracek of the Florida Diagnostic and Learning System Network and a ConnSENSE Hall of Fame member was a project coordinator for this project. That means that individuals with disabilities were considered in these reviews and that the catalog indicates which of the multiple intelligences are addressed for each piece of software. That's certainly a cool idea!
CR