Technology & Learning - March 2009 - (Page 24) PRODUCTREVIEWS PRODUCT: IWORK ’09 www.apple.com Retail price: $71 (single user); $99 (family pack up to 5 users) iWork.com online publishing area simplifies document sharing. CONS: Numbers ’09 still can’t rotate text from horizontal to vertical in spreadsheet table cells. Pages ’09 can’t rotate text to vertical in table cells either. None of the programs has a built-in Autosave, so be sure to save often. While Numbers ’09 charts can be linked to in a Pages ’09 document or Keynote ’09 presentation for live updates, Numbers ’09 spreadsheets cannot. Numbers ’09 still lacks support for Excel macros. OVERALL IMPRESSION: iWork ’09 consists of three relatively easy to learn, economically priced Mac-only productivity toolkits that work well with other Macintosh applications. iWork ’09 delivers these productivity tools in one user-friendly package. Another plus is the new Formula List View in Numbers because it shows all formulas in use for quick review in a pane beneath an open spreadsheet table. Students will really like the new transition and animation effects of Keynote ’09. —Carol Holzberg iWork ’09, Apple’s latest suite of Mac-only productivity tools, consisting of Pages ’09, Numbers ’09, and Keynote ’09, gives users more options for word processing, desktop publishing, number crunching, charting, and animated multimedia presentations. iWork ’09 applications can seamlessly retrieve images from iPhoto, movies from iMovie, audio files from iTunes and database information from Address Book. They also work well with Mail, iWeb, and Photo Booth. PROS: Intuitive dropdown menus, uncluttered toolbars, and a collection of free video tutorials at Apple’s iWork ’09 Web site will all ease new users into the iWork ’09 productivity toolkit. Pages ’09 now sports improved mail merge capabilities. Programs in the iWork ’09 suite work well with Apple Macintosh applications such as iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, Mail and Address Book. The new PRODUCT: TURNITIN WRITECYCLE www.turnitin.com License price: $2/student/year This Web-based solution allows an instructor to create, collect, electronically grade and check writing assignments. The students complete writing assignments and submit them to the teacher electronically. The teacher can mark up the pages, give feedback on style and grammar, tell them what’s missing and how they can improve—all electronically. Students can then turn the assignment in for second round. The instructor can also check it for plagiarism. The goal is deliver feedback to the student that helps the student become a better writer. PROS: The product is easy to use and has excellent online training materials in both PDF and Flash format. In the plagiarism check, the program searches Web content for matches to what the student has written. The GradeMark mark up and grading feature of WriteCycle is another nice feature that allows teachers to give frequent and detailed online feedback to the student. CONS: Because the plagiarism report is so detailed, checking every student paper could be time-consuming. The peer-review part of the system is a good idea, but some stu- dents could make inappropriate comments about other students work. OVERALL IMPRESSION: This product would be good for schools that require writing across the curriculum. —Joe Huber 24 | TECH & LEARNING http://www.apple.com http://www.iWork.com http://www.turnitin.com
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