Educational Software- February '98

Alan Hilvert and Linda Bruce hit the Net to find the 33 best educational shareware titles.

Shareware

Windows

In this platform game for 5-9 year olds you can solve equations to collect different varieties of food, while avoiding the meanies. You can start playing the game at any level.

Using an illustated keyboard, these drills help beginners and experts improve their typing speed. You can set a words-per-minute goal.

For 4-8 year olds who love colouring, this game offers 10 pictures to colour and print. Register and you access 34 pictures.

Game for 9-12 year olds where you travel through 130 different countries searching for Waldo. On the way you learn about each country and the people who live there.

Discover how people fly in space and check the clearly labeled diagrams.

Handy for High School homework, each calculator in this collection of five (standard, extended, scientific, statistical and financial) does a unique job. You can save equations and they are compatible with Microsoft Excel.

Cool High School Science game where you breed biots and see if they live or die. The green biots transform sunlight into energy. The red biots eat the green biots, but the greens have a secret defence.

Square roots, min/max values, intersections, and others - graph equations fast, with Equation Grapher. Also features, zoom functions and the option of pasting your completed graph into documents.

Learn about the human body and it's functions. Detailed illustrations, animations and a hyperlinked database make a useful reference program.

A challenging math game for 9-12 year olds, that fosters understanding of basic maths concepts. Fine for school or home.

Animated Beginning Typing teaches touch-typing through entertaining activities such as letter jumpers, letter drill, flying letters and tutorial.

Develops spacial awareness with this Tetris-like game where you attempt to fit multiple different falling blocks into matching gaps in the bottom rows. Like life, your reward for completing a number of lines, is progression to more challenging levels where the blocks fall faster and you have less time to react.

Amusing maths problems with three difficulty levels ranging from mid-primary to early secondary level.

Fun to play, with excellent music and simple rules, Dino Spell is a game many seven to 11-year-olds will enjoy despite its American spelling and inability to input your own word lists.

Playing as Sci-Man, a slow, overweight genius lost in a large maze, you explore the world of chemistry. Best for 13-15 year olds.

Shareware version includes one of the nine scenes in the full game, full speech, ingenious cartoons and amusing jokes to entertain 8-12 year olds as they learn grammar.

Windows-based multimedia program that teaches letter recognition, phonic sounds and introductory reading.

Musical Tutorial is excellent way to introduce High school students to learning how to read music notation including treble and bass notes and chords. Also handy for introducing keyboard.

Ole 2.0 is a Spanish language tutor that aims to teach travellers phrases to help them survive in Spanish-speaking countries.

Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts is essentially a paint program for five to nine year-olds. You place dozens of pre-drawn objects similar to stickers on three intriguing backgrounds (nine with the registered version).

Talking Spelling for Windows is a useful strategy to improve your spelling on one of the given spelling lists. Alternatively you can input your own.

The Yukon Trail is an excellent way of exploring the history of gold rushes in the Yukon. You look around, ask questions, choose a partner, buy supplies, and decide whether to be rude or diplomatic. Next find the fastest routes, meet the native people, brave injuries and theft. If you survive you may strike pay dirt!

DOS

When you wish to telephone another country, check what time it is there with GeoClock. It depicts a continuously updated map of the earth, with the position of the sun and which places are in night and day.

The Animated Alphabet introduces initial letter sounds to three to six-year-olds. It presents a picture and asks you to press the starting letter of the word.

Animated Math introduces three to six year olds to counting objects, multiple choice and addition. The program rewards correct answers with a short animation.

Nifty game for 6th Grade Science! In Animal Quest 4 your aim is to live and eat as much as you can. Your choice of animal affects how easy the game is.

Fine program offering a rare insight into the clippers who traded with China and the tea trade China and the world.

Colourful DOS paint program for five to 10-year-olds. Easy to use activities include a colouring book, sketch book for you to create your own; counting coloured spots; colour identification; and creating spiral designs.

You remember Hangman? They challenge you to reveal a missing word by choosing letters? Choose wrongly and then get one step closer to being hanged. The children's version has simpler words and in the party version, more than two people can play. You can input your own lists to tailor learning to your needs.

Neat for three to six year-olds who love painting, drawing and admiring their work.

Maths platform game for seven to 11 year-olds. Once you have answered all the questions, you progress a level. The shareware has a variety of skill levels for addition and subtraction and the registered version adds multiplication and division.

Word Rescue is a quest game to improve 8 to twelve year-olds reading skills. The Gruzzles are stealing letters from all around the world. You join Benny the Butterfly on his quest to save all the letters and return them to their words.

Commercial Demos

Windows

This comprehensive program offers seven years of mathematics curriculum in exciting multimedia formats that reinforce, expand, and evaluate student learning. Students simply love the animation and interactivity; parents and teachers recognize the educational value.

Larson's Leapfrog Math is designed to supplement classroom instruction and ensure that students master and apply math skills, become comfortable with a variety of problem presentations, and learn how the mathematics skills they are developing relate to real-life situations.

The Elementary Series addresses skills and concepts normally covered in Kindergarten through Grade 2, followed by the Intermediate Series, for Grades 3 through 6.

The revamped Personal Tutor maths is the only maths program tailored for the Australian High School Mathematics curriculum Years 7 to 12. For students 12 years and over who are keen to improve their maths and committed to extra time, $150 to $250 depending on the unit, is money well spent.

The Personal Tutor Maths packages are tailored to Maths courses in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. The Year 11 program for example, is based on the NSW 2-Unit Maths and the 2-Unit component of 3-Unit. The software contains step-by-step solutions, exam practise, and a personalised revision program.

The program presents as an interactive text book with 620 questions and worked solutions arranged in the following chapters: Arithmetic; Plane Geometry; Progressions and Series; Linear Functions and Lines; Quadratic Polynomial and Parabola; Algebra; Trigonometry; Real Functions; and Differential Calculus. Select the chapter you want, then the lesson, and proceed to read the instructions and explanations.

The strength of Personal Tutor Maths is that it is a teaching package. Information is carefully structured and the program instructs by asking a question, indicating the relevant information you need to answer and walking you through the entire solution if you make a mistake. You can produce a report of your strengths, weaknesses and progress at every stage of learning.

As the Personal Tutor Maths series requires student commitment, it would ideally be suited to an enthusiastic student with an encouraging coach or teacher. Many Australian high schools employ it because it is tailored for the high school maths curriculums our kids are trying to master.

by Linda Bruce

Previous PC User Offline CD's

Education - January '97

Education - December '97

Education - November '97

Education - October '97

Education - September '97

Education - August '97

Education - July '97

Education - June '97

Education - May '97

Education - April '97

Education - March '97