CLEARVUE/eav's Native American Rock Art of the Southwest
Contact Information
CLEARVUE/eav
Chicago, IL
(800) 253-2788
www.clearvue.com
Suggested Price: $75
As part of CLEARVUE/eav's PowerCD series, Native American Rock Art of the Southwest has common, easy-to-use features: an outline navigator, a presentation manager, a grade book, quizzes, a brief CD-based learning guide, view mode, photo index, and a history feature that allows you to retrace your path. It also includes a dictionary, reference material, and an extensive catalog of PowerCD titles. The CD-ROM is intended for grades 7-12, d'es not require installation, and runs on Mac or Windows systems.
As a professor of education, I'm concerned about the cognitive level of curriculum content and instruction, as well as explicit instructional and learning strategies and styles supporting student learning (for my teachers-in-training and their future students). All learning objectives in the program's learning guide occur at Bloom's level 1 (knowledge) or level 2 (comprehension), with seven of the nine being at the basic knowledge level. No objectives approach higher order cognitive levels, like analysis, synthesis or evaluation. All test items in the quizzes are at the basic knowledge level.
The program focuses on the identification and naming of facts concerning culturally and historically significant artifacts. The student learning in this program is essentially passive memorization of facts, recognition of an object, or identification of definitions. The learning guide d'es not address active construction of meaning and understanding. Although the program provides very structured, knowledge-oriented student assessment, the evaluation's content reflects the product's limited cognitive and learning objectives.
The program has a factual error and other limitations. The Three Rivers petroglyph site in New Mexico is a Bureau of Land Management facility, and it is in the Tularosa Basin. The narrative and quiz items incorrectly refer to "Telerosa." It is difficult to distinguish features and details in many of the photographs; digitally enhancing the images would make them more clear and informative for students and teachers. The program d'es not allow for the import or export of multimedia material, thus limiting use of the program's content in larger, more technologically-oriented learning activities. The electronic registration of the product would not function. An automated technical support and customer service system makes obtaining human contact and help difficult.
Creative use of Rock Art has the potential to contribute to all six of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Students. The high school performance indicators listed in Appendix A: Standards of the National Educational Technology Standards for Students: Connecting Curriculum and Technology (ISTE 2000) are developed and advocated by national and international subject-area professional organizations. Teachers and students may find that the program's content relates to three of 12 English Language performance indicators (1, 4, and 7), four of 11 Foreign Language indicators (1.3, 2.1, 2.2, and 3.2), three of nine Information Literacy indicators (7, 8, and 9), and four of 10 Social Studies Indicators (I, II, III, and IX).
Douglas R. Knox, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor
School of Education
New Mexico Highlands University
Las Vegas, NM
[email protected]
This article originally appeared in the 03/01/2001 issue of THE Journal.