Academic Software

Based on the academic software evaluation criteria list on page 218, the five evaluation criteria that I would personally consider to be the most important are, in no particular order, active learning, cost, grade level, hardware compatibility and helpful features.
Active learning would be extremely important when choosing programs to use in your classroom.  These products are going to require that the student is more hands on and involved, which will increase the comprehension for that student of the materials they are going over.  Many programs are set up so that there is a lot of 'watch and listen' rather than hands on, which does not challenge the students learning.
Cost is important for obvious reasons.  Our economy is in a recession, schools do not get as much funding as they deserve, and teachers have to work around this obstacle.  What is important to remember, however, is that more expensive does not always equal better.  Teachers have to be aware of budget issues and become the best bargain shoppers they can be.
Grade level.  This again is pretty obvious why it is an extremely important criteria to take into consideration when evaluating software for a classroom.  Children's minds are constantly absorbing information, growing, but you if you present them with information that is too complex or too simple for what they already know then even the best programs will be useless.  Example: if you present a group of high school students with a program that uses language that is more suited for a third grade classroom the high school students will become bored with this and not pay attention.  In contrast, if you present a third grade class with information more suitable for a high school class the vast majority of the students will not be able to comprehend the language and ideas being presented, become confused, and then stop paying attention to the material.  Grade level is also important because it gives the instructor a quick and easy comprehension of where his or her students should be academically and can help them to create lesson plans and focus on subjects better than before.
Hardware compatibility is an easily overlooked but very important aspect to the technology that you bring into your classroom.  If you buy the most amazing programs but they cannot run on the software that your school uses, then you cannot use it, and everyone loses.  Most programs are available for all software systems, its just as simple as reading the box before you make the purchase.  You would not want to buy a blue-ray dvd if your dvd player cannot play blue-ray would you?
Lastly, helpful features that the academic software offers is an important aspect to take into consideration.  This feature in your software can help you not only fix problems that may come up while using the program, but also teach you how to use it so that you get the full range of what the program offers.  Helpful features can also be used by the students so that they can use programs however they deem necessary.
The three academic software choices that I used in my mindmap were Rosetta Stone, Encyclopedia Brittanica, and Google Docs.  Rosetta Stone can do many things for the classrooms of tomorrow, such as teach English speaking students a new language, teach students whose primary language may be something other than English to speak fluently the English language, and it would allow teachers to learn other languages to that they can better communicate with their students.  Encyclopedia Brittanica is an excellent resource for research, that, unlike wikipedia, cannot be edited by the community, which ensures accurate information is what the person using it receives.  Lastly Google Docs is excellent for students who begin projects in the classroom and need to take them home, or if time is alloted in the classroom they can work on something in class that they have been doing from home.  It also is an excellent back up for documents in case, for example, a students portable storage devises were to not work.