While it is widely accepted that adding business and entrepreneurial training to a technical curriculum improves the caliber of graduates, finding ways to effectively blend business skills into an education program has been a challenge for faculty.

In an attempt to bridge the gap between technology education and entrepreneurial skill-set development, Microsoft has partnered with various university-level institutions across Europe as part of a pilot initiative to encourage usage of the Software Entrepreneurship for Students curriculum.

Five hands-on workshops were given to develop and provide technical universities and colleges with a flexible software business management curriculum for science and software students. The Software Entrepreneurship for Students curriculum gives technical faculty the tools to introduce students to real-world management skills and competencies needed to fuel innovation, support entrepreneurs and aid employability of the next generation.

The Software Entrepreneurship for Students hands-on workshop was delivered in five European countries during May and June 2007 in preparation for using the content in the next academic year.

Feedback from Students and Faculty

The pilot workshops – held at academic institutions in Portugal, Poland, Germany, Spain and Denmark – attracted a mix of faculty members and students.

Attendees at the Portugal workshop included Miguel Vicente, a Microsoft Student Partner who is a student at the Faculdade de Engenharia (faculty of engineering) at Universidade do Porto.

Microsoft Student Partners will help create awareness for this curriculum at their university and can encourage the usage by faculty and student associations.

Vicente believes the Software Entrepreneurship for Students curriculum is valuable not only for students aspiring to become entrepreneurs and business founders, but also provides “the kind of positive thinking” that is valuable for employees within existing businesses who want to make a difference in the market”.

As a Microsoft Student Partner, Vicente is enthusiastic about being involved in a peer-to-peer evangelizing initiative to encourage up-take of the Software Entrepreneurship for Students curriculum, one of several initiatives planned during 2008 to grow support in Portugal for the program.

Value for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Another attendee at the Portugal pilot workshop was Paulo Sousa, a faculty member of the School of Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto.

Sousa said the institute recently added entrepreneurship curriculum to its study program, which is being taught by business professors, and he believed the availability of content in the form of the Software Entrepreneurship for Students curriculum would be of value to other institutions that were on the path to making a similar move.

He said with processes to add new content to an institution’s curriculum often being complex and taking a long time, introducing Software Entrepreneurship for Students content in the form of summer schools or evening workshops may be the most practical approach for many institutions.

Connecting Science and Business Education

In Denmark, delivery of the pilot Entrepreneurship for Students program generated strong interest and a commitment from faculty to teach the type of curriculum put forward, says Microsoft Denmark Academic Relations Manager Henrik Westergaard Hansen.

Hansen said he will use the curriculum to attempt to build bridges between second-tier technical and business educational institutions in Denmark which could form valuable partnerships through teaching the Entrepreneurship for Students program.

“The really good thing about this is not that it presents content that is brand new, but that the context and the framework around the content is flexible and simple,” said Pia Peterson, a faculty member who attended the pilot workshop in Denmark.

The open source community has offered several LMS options over the past several years: Tutor, Claroline, and OLAT, for example, all have their adherents, but the front runners among U.S. colleges and universities are Sakai and Moodle.
Just how big a bite these systems have taken out of the commercial LMS pie is hard to determine. For one thing, the low barrier to entry that Open Source LMS Moodle offers with its free-download option suggests there could be a big gap between the number of installations and the number of functional sites that actually use the product. Yet in evaluating Web traffic for LMS systems, the Alexis Web Traffic report found Moodle was second, trailing behind only Blackboard.

OSS is Alive and Well at a College Near You
“Open source is here and it’s going to be with us for a long time,” said Kenneth C. Green, director of The Campus Computing Project. Green presented this year’s findings at the EDUCAUSE 2007 annual conference, which described The Campus Computing Project on its website as “the largest continuing study of the role of information technology in American higher education.”

As part of the project, CIOs and other senior campus officials from 555 institutions answered questions about their use of open source. The findings reveal what Green calls an “affirmative ambivalence” toward open source—a willingness to consider it, but uneasiness about how it will play out.

Green saw a clear differentiation in attitudes about two distinct software categories—those administered by technical staff and those used by faculty, staff, and students. In the first category, back-end OSS applications have long been a staple of academia, where Linux and Apache are widely deployed. According to the survey, these applications had a greater than 60 percent usage rate. For the second category, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications, “the numbers fall by half because we’re only in the initial stages of deployment…for non-technical end-users,” said Green.

Even so, the new survey suggests that Sakai and, especially, Moodle are gaining rapidly in their rate of acceptance. “We’re seeing in our 2007 survey some big jumps in these numbers, “Green reported. “The 2007 data suggest that 10 percent of campuses have standardized on an open-source application, and it’s upwards of 20 percent in private four-year colleges, where Moodle is overwhelmingly the leader. This is big news.
“This has happened in a relatively short period of time,” Green observed. “Very short for Moodle, very short for Sakai—especially when you consider the campus calendar is rigid. These things don’t happen mid-year.”

Embracing Ambivalence
For the academic CIO, ambivalence about the software they purchase is not limited to open source. At a study last year sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and others (see Software and Collaboration in Higher Education: A Study of Open Source Software, participants voiced three concerns about commercial software:
• Cost concerns: Vendors could phase out commercial software after institutions had invested heavily in it.
• Performance: Commercial software is not optimized for use in an educational setting.
• Control: Software firms in this market have shown how easily they can consolidate, reducing competition and giving vendors unfair pricing leverage.

Concerns about open source software, by contrast, center on legal issues and liability. How could software purchasers ensure a specific OSS application had been appropriately licensed? Could individuals or institutions be liable if the code infringed on someone else’s work?
Those keeping an eye on such legal issues to see how they evolve will want to monitor work of the Software Freedom Law Center, which, according to their website, offers legal services “to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software.”

The below-mentioned factors are guidelines that help you evaluate the benefits of importance of different considerations in your selection. These tips just emphasize that you ensure that the points are checked carefully before purchasing any software from an education software vendor. Your own learning success and enjoyment would rather benefit more from any kind of research you carry out before the purchase.

The first factor to consider is the age of the user. Most probably a teenager or your young children must be using the product. You would want the software to be appropriate of his/her age. Maybe simple education software could teach your child to type and about the basic computer skills or you could also go for advanced learning systems.

The capability to keep the user’s attention is also an important factor in the success of education software. For a young child it would be better to get software that features one of the popular cartoon character or an interactive store and better if the software is self paced. Another factor to be considered is whether the software blends properly with the learning style of the user. You can evaluate whether your child learns by playing thinking games or solving puzzles or taking quizzes. You can also consider whether you need software for your kind that adapts to the his/her level of difficulty and learning. Once you are sure, you can search for software that focuses on these aspects.

The next thing to consider is whether you are looking out for software by title or by software. In case you are aware of the software’s name then you must already have done some research. However, in case you are just searching for a software that can help your child to learn French, then it is better that your evaluate the learning techniques of all the different learning software available for the language. You will be able to find that they differ a lot in terms of the technique. Some teach languages using immersion method. Some even let you converse with the software interactively.

The next thing to consider is whether the software will be able to run with your computer. As a help, most of the Educational Software providers specify the system requirements on their websites or on their brochures. Ensure to analyze the requirements thoroughly.

Thus using ultra innovative educational software will not help you make enormous money, but of course it can help the students understand concepts in a much better way.

The rising popularity of interactive based teaching, equipped with real-life experience, forced the professionals, dealing with education system, to escape from the conventional instruction based teaching. Rather, they adopted audiovisual design in classrooms empowered by educational software.

Undoubtedly, results with a difference were soon very much evident. The evaluators found that the learners, especially kids, were more entranced when the teacher used multimedia devices to elaborate any concept. The students, seeing visuals added with audio, were comprehensively comfortable and gave their maximum attention while the session went on.
Thus this satisfying evaluation led numerous companies to jump into the field of developing educational software. Of course, we can say, at some extent, that the competition amongst the companies to come up with the best educational software has given it a commercial undertone. However, this commercialization is solely meant for education, thus it can be bearable.

As the educational software tend to be interactive, the kids get greater chances to discuss a topic and clear the doubts, if any. Thus, as a result, they become more vocal and can have their personal point of views on a certain topic. It helps a lot to develop their communication skills.

Thus the software companies are developing a series of interactive educational software with the help of educational software developers who are well versed with the students psychology and their needs. They are also trained to understand the demand of syllabus and curriculum of the related educational institution.

For example; educational software like Kidspiration, Microsoft office, Inspiration, iLife etc are the flag bearers in this regard. Such educational software help the students of various grades in the better planning, evaluation and comprehension of the subject matters.

Inspiration is most suitable for students studying in grades between 6-12. Also educational software for all age groups and grades can be found at Educational Software Reviews.

Moreover, the ongoing boom in online and distant education system would not have been a possibility without the advent of these educational software. A student, miles away from the schools and colleges, learns successfully a concept, all because of the audiovisual aid.

Children really enjoy having fun while they learn and this is the main factor that makes educational software such an effective tool. With innumerable ways to include graphics, sound effects, games and other activities in educational software, it is little wonder that children are excited to spend time learning.

For example, I was always excited to use one of the math programs at my elementary school. As I remember it, every time I solved a math problem correctly, my race car got to move further around the track. Even though I didn’t enjoy doing math at my desk with paper and pencil, I learned the skills that I needed because I enjoyed playing that game. This shows that with the right incentive any child can be eager to tackle the next problem. And, by making learning fun, you can actually help cultivate a love for learning in your child.

Using a tool that children enjoy also eliminates a lot of the energy previously needed to persuade students to focus on their work. And, because of its availability, educational software can be used in either a school or home setting. This means you can improve information retention by reinforcing the things your child studies at school. For example, instead of buying a game with little or no educational value that promotes violence and blowing things up, why not invest in a game that teaches math skills, new vocabulary words, geography, science or history.

Working with educational software will also help children develop useful computer skills. Typing, opening programs and saving material will all help prepare them for using the computer in future education. I have seen this increased ability in my own little sister. Even as a five-year-old, she really knows her way around a laptop. She is much more computer savvy than I was at her age and it probably won’t be long before she passes up my parents.

Once children learn how to use the program, reviewing material can be done independently too. This will not only improve self-confidence and independence, but it will free up some time for parents and teachers too.

When you shop for educational software, pay attention to both the grade level and the skill sets that it has been designed for. Even fun programs can get discouraging if the problems are too advanced.