Technology & Learning - November 2008 - (Page 16)

PRODUCTREVIEWS Put to the Test By Joe Huber, Carol S. Holzberg, and Karen Greenwood Henke PRODUCT: WEEWORLD www.weeworld.com Retail Price: Free, some accessories require points. DESCRIPTION: WeeWorld is a 2D virtual world with charming avatars and a playful culture. Anyone, anywhere over the age of 13 can create a WeeMee and start playing. HOW TO USE IN THE CLASSROOM: Virtual Worlds give students and adults a place to explore identity, develop opinions, and make new friends. WeeWorld shows an alternative to some of the more adult sites. It is a mainstream social networking site with more than 24 million “WeeMees” worldwide, and some of the most engaged users. The average age on WeeWorld is 19 with a second bump at 30. PROS: WeeMees decorate their fantasy rooms with brightly colored wall paper, musical instruments, book shelves, and DJ turn tables. Avatars are cute, not sexy, and selected WeeMees serve as red carpet hosts to greet newcomers. WeeMees engage in pretty innocent role playing, games, forums, and other interactions. They create virtual families and work together to solve problems such as putting an end to chain emails. By far the most popular forums are for making friends and role playing, but community, causes and politics, style, and music are also strong draws. CONS: There is a commercial aspect to the product. Players can purchase brand-name apparel. WeeMees shop, decorate, and define themselves by their looks and accessories. However, when they become active in the community, they begin to define themselves by what they say and what they do. OVERALL IMPRESSION: WeeWorld is very easy to use—just point, click, and save. The community and the aesthetic offer an alternative place for role playing and community building to other virtual worlds. PRODUCT: ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE 4 MASTER COLLECTION www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/mastercollection/ Retail price: $999 single license educational pricing DESCRIPTION: Adobe Creative Suite 4 includes graphic editing, audio editing, video editing, PDF creating and editing, Flash creating and editing, Web page design, and editing software (13 products total). HOW TO USE IN THE CLASSROOM: With Adobe Creative Suite 4, a class could produce a radio broadcast, a TV broadcast, design a school newspaper, newsletter, or animated Web site for a school district. Any type of communication that a school would need could be produced with this software. PROS: This is an excellent collection of software that allows the end user to create any type of multimedia. Even though the cost of this software is rather high, the amount of power that one has with it makes it a very good value. CONS: It took more than 2.5 hours to install all the software even on a very good computer (dual core processor 3.6 MHZ 4MB RAM), so a school would need a powerful workstation computer to run effectively. In-service training is required (as with most software). OVERALL IMPRESSION: Any student learning these products will have a huge advantage both in higher education and in industry, making the software an excellent value for any school. The products of Adobe Creative Suite 4 are high quality and very professional and will make administrators, staff, and students proud to have it represent the school. 16 | TECH & LEARNING http://www.weeworld.com http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/mastercollection/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Technology & Learning - November 2008

Technology & Learning - November 2008 Contents Editor’s Desk News & Trends Put to the Test WeeWorld Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection SAS Curriculum Pathways Rosetta Stone Classroom Version Pulse Smartpen Highlights from T&L Top Classrooms Kepping the VoIP from Being the Wrong Number Watch It Back Office Business What’s New Keeping Tabs Leader of the Year Profile: Music to Their Ears

Technology & Learning - November 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.