Atlas Curriculum Mapping Software Review

At our school we are currently using the Web-based program Atlas, created by Rubicon International, for our curriculum planning. It is a new project the school has taken on over the last two years that is still in its infancy stages. Curriculum mapping is defined by Wikipedia as, “a procedure for reviewing the operational curriculum as it is entered into an electronic data base at any education setting.” In order to make this work teachers enter into a large database all the things they have taught and when they have taught it. The administration and teaching staff can look over what is by taught by grade level, departments, etc. to see what essential learning is being unnecessarily repeated, and what essential learning is being is missed. Then, the staff can work together to make improvements. In this sense curriculum does not stay static, but rather is constantly evolving and, hopefully, improving.

To review this site I am going to use a combination of the subheadings found in Appendix A.3 (Essential Criteria Checklist for Evaluating Instructional Courseware) & Appendix A.5 (Checklist of Criteria For Evaluating Web Sites) of Roblyers’ “Integrating Educational Technology Into Teaching”

The Positives of this Mapping Program are as follows:

Visual Design

-The site is very simple with nice colour contrasts
-The colours are not overwhelming and there is a consistent, limited colour pattern
-There is nothing that overloads the eyes
-The font is well sized and easy to read

Navigation

-Pages load quickly
-Pages have simple, consistent navigation schemes to let users get to desired places quickly and easily
-The first page indicates clearly how the site is organized and how to get to items of interest
-Links are easy to identify & icons clearly represent the information they link to
-It is easy to get back to the homepage

User Flexibility

-The user has good control over movement within the program
-The interface is easy to use
-The user can access the site anywhere that there is Internet availability

Miscellaneous

-The site is secure
-The site has its own search engine

Technical Soundness

-The site loads consistently without error
-The site does what the screen says it should do

The Negatives of this Mapping Program are as follows:

-It takes a lot of time by many different people for the initial setup of the program, including Rubicon consultants, School Administration, and every single teacher on the staff.
-In order to truly work everyone on a staff must be fully on board with the program and giving 100% effort. If not there may be significant gaps in the information.
-In the beginning stages it may be hard for non-technical people to see the full advantages of using the program to track curriculum. As a result a lot of resentment may spread among some staff members.

My Recommendation:

Overall I recommend this site for a school to use when it does curriculum mapping. I think the site itself goes a long way to making the process as easy as possible for the teachers involved, especially those teachers that are not very strong technologically.