Educational programs in our English, Reading, and EAP lab

• SkillsLab 2.0 - I'm piloting this site for the college. So far I've found it to be extremely complicated. The students are so focused on maneuvering through the program, that they have difficulty focusing on Reading. The program gives the students a lot of options, but it's poor organization makes it hardly worth the effort. I'm currently working with our sales representatives and their IT department to customize the software. The material available, especially in Reading Road Trip makes me want to work this out. Each topic is thoroughly covered with multiple exercises for practice.
• My Skills Tutor - This program is so easy to work with. Students rarely ever have difficulty navigating this site. The program covers many subjects from English to Math to Information Skills, so it does not go into great detail with any one topic.
• ELLIS - This ESOL software was a little difficult to install, but definitely worth the effort. The students love it. Its eye-pleasing graphics and interactive multimedia make it the most enjoyable program for students to work with while allowing to practice all their English language skills.
• Exercise Central - This software accompanies our prep English texts. It provides a lot of practice exercises, but no tutorials. All information is presented in the text. The multiple choice exercises are fine, but the fill in the blank and complete the sentence exercises need to be a bit more flexible. If the student does not have the sentence word for word, the computer marks it wrong. This site also comes with the Bedford Researcher which is a great help for writing papers.