Discis Family Pack Volume 2
Reviewed by Peter Oliver
Published by Discis

Age Group: Age 4 to 8 Type: Language Arts Price: Unknown

Description:

Educational software has been around for years now and with the recent advances in multi-media it is becoming more and more impressive. The Discis Books series is a collection of books which have been converted to CD-ROM. Of course, they have not simply been put on a CD, but have been enhanced to harness the power of today's computers. Each CD presents a multi-media book which will read itself to a child whilst sound effects and music complement the story. The books present many options, such as varying speeds of reading , explanations of words, and even options to have the book read in a different language. As the child's reading ability grows, he can use the computer just to tell him the words he can't read. These books are intended to teach and enhance children's reading abilities and they seem to be very effective.

This particular pack comes with five CDs; The Paper Bag Princess, Scary Poems For Rotten Kids, The Tale Of Benjamin Bunny, Heather Hits Her First Home Run and Moving Gives Me A Stomach Ache. The varied selection of stories should prevent a child boring with the set, but be warned that each story is on a separate CD. Before you can let your child loose on these interactive books, you'll need to set up the software.

SETTING IT UP

Installing the software is a doddle. You just need to run the install program from the CD and the computer does all the work. Once the program that reads the book has been installed, you can use any Discis book with it.

Customising the program is an equally easy task. A simple to use options screen allows you to select from a list what will happen when the child clicks on various things. For example, the default setting for clicking on words is as follows; If you click on a word, the computer reads the word to you. If you double click on a word, the computer reads the word and then slowly pronounces the syllables one at a time. If you click and hold on the word, the computer gives you a definition of what the word means.

All sorts of options are available for clicking on pictures, speech icons and individual words. It's all very impressive apart from one thing. You can't use the right mouse button for anything. I suspect this is because the software has been designed for Apple Macs as well as the PC. Mac mice only have the one button, but it would be easier for the child with the PC to be able to press the right mouse button instead of having to perform the tricky double-click. The advantage of the software is that you can use the same CDs on either a PC or a Mac, so if you change system, your software will not need replacing. Overall, the ease of setup is admirable and the software even has an option to disable the screen saver, allowing slower children not to be interrupted.

HOW DOES IT WORK THEN?

The system for interacting with the books is quite straight forward. A page from the book appears on screen which contains both pictures and text. To move through the book, the child has to click on the bottom corners of the pages which effectively turns to the next page. There is a slider at the side of the screen for skipping to distant pages. The book even remembers which page you were on last when you reload it, and allows the user to define his own 'bookmarks' to go to specific locations in the book.

Interaction with the text is equally easy. The child can either click on individual words or an icon next to each sentence. As mentioned earlier, the exact result of clicking on this icons can be changed by the parent, but the computer would usually just read the desired word/sentence to the child. As the computer reads, the words it is currently saying are highlighted in yellow so that children can follow where they are in the text. The implementation of the text and reading is very well done, and if you don't like it you can change the set-up.

As well as interacting with the text, the child can also click on the various illustrations on each page. This results in the computer telling the child what the picture is, by both speech and text. The attention to detail is very impressive. For example, if you click on a character in the picture the computer will not just tell you the name of the character. It all depends where you click on the character. You may get the response 'shirt', or 'finger', etc. There is a huge amount of responses to find for each picture and this should prevent boredom setting in. Some pictures also have sound effects to go with their names. For example, if you click on the car you will hear it revving its engine. The implementation of graphics is very well done and should provide the child with a break from reading the text.

The books are quite easy to use and should not be difficult for a child to master.

THE CONTENT

The content of this particular pack of five books proves to be a good spread of styles. The traditional tale of Benjamin Bunny will appeal to some children, will others may prefer the more gruesome Scary Poems. The four stories included in the pack seem to be fairly good children's stories, and the poem CD provides a different sort of experience. The stories seem all to have been released as traditional books before they have moved to CD, so they are of a high standard. If these particular stories do not appeal to you, then there is a wide range of alternative stories from which to select.

The educational value of the stories seems to be very good. The stories are not too simple to insult the average six year old's reading skills, but they are not too complicated to have children totally lost. The value of these books will vary from child to child. Obviously, if the child is happily reading the morning papers, it is unlikely that he will gain much benefit from these CDs. Discis recommend the books for children aged from four to nine. This seems to be a fair range and most children of this age should benefit from the series.

The quality of the pictures is very good. They are traditional artwork that has been scanned into the computer, and the result is very pleasing to the eye. The music and sound effects are also of a good quality and many of the sound effects will have children laughing. The whole package comes together very well, especially when the computer reads the whole book through, adding sound at just the right moments in the text.

The only major criticism of the content comes if you are English. It is important to bear in mind that the books have been made by Americans. This does introduce some problems with different spellings and pronunciations. There are some phrases in some of the stories which are noticeable for their American influence. Mostly, these are minor points (such as 'Mom' instead of 'Mum'). However, as the software is designed for teaching reading skills, you may wish to bear this point in mind. The problem is that nearly all educational software originates in America and minor clashes in language will always crop up. It's not a big problem, and is no worse than the child watching American TV shows. I'm English and would certainly not discount the software because of its American influence.

WHAT DOES A SIX-YEAR OLD THINK OF IT?

I could waffle forever about the various merits and disadvantages of the software, but the most important thing is to ask a child what he thinks. I enlisted the help of a six-year old who tested the software with me.

The first thing you have to do is teach the child to use the mouse. This brings out a new advantage of the software. Computer skills are becoming increasingly important in today's society, and software such as this can be the first step to teaching a child how to operate a computer. Ten minutes provided long enough for the child to get the hang of the mouse, with increasing skill being show as time went on.

Getting the hang of operating the book took a further fifteen minutes, and guidance had to be provided for quite a while after that. However, the child was captivated by the experience. Using a computer had much more novelty value than reading with a boring grown-up. The stories proved to be interesting enough to catch the attention of the child and he was certainly following the text.

This test, although admittedly brief, did show that the simple concept of these books works very well with children. The child was very enthusiastic about using the software and was certainly benefiting from the experience. However, do not expect the books to compete with 'real' games. I can't see children choosing to use the Discis books in preference to their favourite platformer. If the child already has access to games, parents may have to encourage children to use the books.

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