Teacher Utilities

Calendar Machine Plus, Visions Technology in Education (Macintosh, Windows), Grades 3-8

Calendar Machine Plus is a classroom utility designed for students and teachers. This program not only prints calendars, but also includes lesson plans, a searchable 900-event and holiday database, and much more.

Crossword Companion Deluxe, Visions Technology in Education (Macintosh, Windows), Grades 3-8

Crossword Companion Deluxe creates crossword puzzles in a jiffy. Teachers can customize these puzzles by choosing from three graphic sizes. This easy-to-use program has word processing features and an array of print options.

Easy Grade Pro, Orbis Software (Macintosh), All Grades

Easy Grade Pro comes with a wide range of tools including grading, attendance, seating, analysis, and reporting. Unlike other grading programs, Easy Grade Pro integrates all classes into a single file and at the same time enables teachers to manage each class individually. The program has many options that range from including multiple subjects in reports to adding and rotating furniture.

Gradebook Plus, Clearvue/eav (Macintosh), All Grades

Gradebook Plus is an intuitive program that any novice can use. The program helps you with oral reminders such as "Don't forget to back up." With this program, you can add any of 15 user-definable comments to reports and annotate student reports with sound. On-screen editing and a mini-word processor enable you to create reports and letters.

Grade Busters: Making the Grade, Jay Klein Productions (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

Grade Busters: Making the Grade records 80 students, 320 assignments, 25 assignment categories, and five grading scales per class and displays the results graphically. Furthermore, it allows you to generate reports in English and Spanish.

Grade Machine, Misty City (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

Grade Machine is loaded with features such as e-mail capability for student progress reports, student pictures in seating charts, on-screen color for grades, unlimited length for student notes, and much more. This program has a comprehensive Help system that enables the teacher to get answer to frequently asked questions.

GradeQuick, Jackson Software (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

GradeQuick is a gradebook gem that is as simple to use as a paper grade book. There are no confusing windows to set up or long, involved procedures. You simply start this program, and it immediately calculates grades and statistics. GradeQuick easily displays or prints student pictures on seating charts, enters attendance with a click, and posts reports on the Web.

Inspiration, Inspiration Software (Macintosh, Windows), Grade K-Adult

This program is a visual learning tool that helps students develop ideas and organize their thinking. Students or teachers can create concept maps, story webs, semantic maps, storyboards, bubble diagrams, and outlines.

IEP Writer Supreme II, Super School Software (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

IEP Writer Supreme II has all the IEP forms you need to complete any report. The program follows state standards and features planning tools, resources for classroom teachers, as well as an objective editor to customize your own library.

Interactive Report Writer, FTC Publishing (Macintosh, Windows), Grades 3-12

Interactive Report Writer is a writing tool that teachers or students can use to help create reports or presentations. This program comes with 50 report templates in six subject areas. Each report has a short introduction followed by interactive writing templates.

Kidspiration (See Special Education)

Learner Profile, Houghton Mifflin (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

Learner Profile records and organizes data for student assessment portfolios. You can instantly record your observations of pupil learning; the observational information can be uploaded to the computer, where it becomes part of the database. This program is very fast and easy to use, and it eliminates burdensome paperwork.

Make-a-Flash, Teacher Support Software (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

This utility makes flash cards for vocabulary words, math, or any subject area. There are multiple templates available, and you can also create your own.

Math Companion Volume 1 and Volume 2, Visions Technology in Education (Macintosh, Windows), Grades K-8

Math Companion 1 is a wonderful utility that enables teachers to create math activity sheets in four different formats with graphic capabilities. For example, you can create color-in activity sheets and math anagrams. You choose from 110 NCTM math objectives. Math Companion 2 covers money, time, counting, place value, sets, fractions, and elementary geometry. You can create flashcards, bingo cards, illustrated money problems, math color-ins, and more.

Neighborhood Map Maker (see Social Studies)

Omni Page Pro, ScanSoft (Macintosh, Office), All Grades

Using Omni Page Pro, you can click a button to scan virtually any document. It is fast and easy to use; it takes mere seconds to turn a piece of paper into an electronic text. An Auto OCR toolbar handles conversion and document reading.

The Portfolio Builder for PowerPoint, Visions Technology in Education (Macintosh, Windows), Grades K-8

This program helps students create maps and print them in all sizes.

The Portfolio Builder for PowerPoint enables students to easily combine sound, videos, text, and graphics to create a representation of their work. In a matter of minutes, a student can import work created with other software applications, graphics, text, scanned images, full-motion video, and sound clips into this portfolio builder.

PowerPak for PowerPoint: An Innovative Collection of Lesson and Game Templates, FTC Publishing (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

PowerPak for PowerPoint enables the teacher to design lesson plan presentations and supplemental games for the whole class. All the work has been done for the teacher; all that remains to do is to type in the questions and answers. PowerPak covers all curriculum areas and includes 24 interactive game templates and dynamic lesson plans for a few students or an entire classroom.

Stationery Studio, FableVision (Macintosh, Windows), Grades K-5

Teachers or students use this fun graphic tool to print writing paper, templates for stories or reports, mini-books, shape books and much more. Teachers can use the program's simple text tool to create story starters and for other classroom activities. Stationery Studio is capable of creating thousands of unique pieces of stationery.

SPSS/PC, SPSS (Windows), Junior high and above

SPSS/PC is a popular statistical package for IBM and compatibles. It is menu driven and has interactive data analysis and an online glossary of statistical terms.

Teacher's Resource Companion Deluxe, Visions Technology in Education (Macintosh, Windows), Grades K-12

Teacher's Resource Companion Deluxe has an easy-to-use interface that many developers are following. This delightful program enables you to create activity sheets, tests, and complete curricular packages. The formats include short essay/free write; multiple choice; true/false; matching; two-, four-, and eight-picture fill-ins, and a word search.

Teacher Tool Kit, TeacherTools.com (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

Teacher Tool Kit is simple to use and offers excellent online help. It creates word searches, word scrambles, word matches, and multiple-choice, true/false, and short-answer tests. The program enables you to randomize questions and print out clean page layouts with answers.

Test Designer Supreme II, Super School (Macintosh, Windows), All Ages

Test Designer Supreme II combines test creation, test taking, sound, graphics, and foreign languages. This program enables you to insert questions from a database and use an overhead projector to give students a timed test on the computer. In addition, you can choose the test format you want and integrate graphics into it.

Timeliner 5.0, Tom Snyder Productions (Macintosh, Windows), Grades 3-12

See Social Studies Programs for a write-up of this award-winning package.

TimeLiner Machine Plus, Visions Technology in Education (Macintosh, Windows), Grades 3-8

Using this program, you can create your own custom time lines for lesson plans, research projects, and events. There are ready-made time line activities and 350 lesson plans with a searchable database of more than 900 historical events.

Vocabulary Companion, Visions Technology in Education (Macintosh, Windows), Grades K-12

With this nifty utility, you can create instructional material covering phonics, word analysis, and vocabulary development. The program has 200 language arts objectives and a database of over 12,000 words. You can print out scrambled words, concentration, game cards, anagrams, color-ins, flash cards, and much more.

Worksheet Magic, Gamco (Macintosh, Windows), All Grades

Teachers create tests, puzzles, and worksheets in a matter of seconds with this program. You enter a sentence and highlight a word, and the program generates the worksheet.

Graphics Programs

Graph Club, Tom Snyder Productions (Macintosh, Windows), Grades K-4

This graphics tool can be used for self-directed exploration, presentations, lessons, or class projects. Students learn to sort, classify information, construct graphs, and analyze data.

Graph Master, Tom Snyder Productions (Macintosh, Windows), Grades 4-8

With Graph Master, students learn how to interpret data using nine different graph types. Students also learn how to use graphs and tables and find, use, and interpret measures of center and spread and much more.

Graphers, Sunburst (Macintosh, Windows), Grades K-4

Students construct and interpret six different graph types with over 20 pictorial data sets and 16 lesson plans.

Graphing & Managing Data, Gamco (Macintosh, Windows), Grades 3-6

Students collect and organize data and read and interpret data that are displayed in tables, charts, and graphs. In addition, they can conduct surveys, record and evaluate data, and draw conclusions.

GraphPower, Ventura Educational Systems (Macintosh), Grades K-8, Special Education

GraphPower develops students' ability to analyze and interpret data by teaching students how to create an array of graphics including pictographs, bar graphs, and circle graphs. An online tutorial helps users overcome graphing problems.

Graphing Workshop, Cognitive Technologies (Macintosh, Windows), Grades 4-12

Students quickly produce pictographs, line graphs, circle graphs, and bar graphs. The program comes with tutorials, integrated draw tools, and built-in statistics. It is easy to use and has a comprehensive teacher's guide with line masters.

Probability Toolkit, Ventura Educational Systems (Macintosh, Windows), Grades K-8

Probability Toolkit is an engaging program that helps students develop a basic understanding of probability and statistics. This educational tool has a variety of interesting simulated experiments involving marbles in a jar, colored spinners, colored chips, dice, and cards. The results of each experiment can be graphed in many different formats such as bar graphs, circle graphs, or line graphs. Furthermore, a detailed instructor's guide and activity sheets accompany the program.