October 24 Post

Max's Sandbox (now Max's Toolbox)

When reading chapter 4 in out textbook, I was very excited about the little sidebar concerning Max's Sandbox. It is a tool to help younger students and students with special needs use Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point applications. Several comments in the lesson plan critiques mentioned concern about the ability of younger students to use the specified technology to complete the learning activities. This tool is a great solution!! Even when teaching older students, there are often children in the classroom who are fuinctioning far below grade level and are mainstreamed in for science and social studies. This would allow them to participate!!

So, I got online to do some research on my own. I learned that Max's Sandbox was developed and tested by an Australian company, eWord. The developers worked closely with early childhood educators to make sure that the software would be suitable for use with kindegarden and early elementary students and children with special needs. The program includes children's templates for producing documents and presentations, sound recording capabilities, and a talking bird that helps even non-readers create projects.

After all this, I was so eager to actually see the product!! I found a place where you were supposed to be able to download a free trial, but it wouldn't work!! I was so frustrated!! I went around the internet looking for a way in, but just couldn't find it. Finally, I went back to the company web page and found an email address. I decided to use an affordance of the internet, and sent an email asking for help. After corresponding with a representative of the company, I learned that the name had been changed to Max's Toolbox, but was still available. (I copied the reply below.) Anyway, for anyone who wants to take a look, the address is www.maxstoolbox.com. The site also has lesson ideas for teaching students how to use the software. I look forward to using this tool in my classroom to help make technology available to all students!!

An extra note of thanks to David Howell from eWord. He responded to my email quickly and graciously!

Hi Sonja,

Thank you for your enquiry about Max’s Sandbox. Max’s Sandbox was actually upgraded to Max’s Toolbox a few years ago! You can get to the site here: www.maxstoolbox.com

www.maxssandbox.com was supposed to go to the same site, but it wasn’t working! Thank you for bringing that to our attention. We’ve fixed that now.

You can download a trial version that works with Office 2000+ from the site above.

If you have any problems or questions, please email me.

Cheers,

David.