Conference hydra::amiga_v1

>< Note 2483.0 by LINCON::MGAINES >
>                -< Education Stuff, Is any of it worth owning? >-

    
 
    I can comment on the following:
        
    	Talking Coloring Book.
    
    Ages:       3 to 6
    
    Graphics:   Very nice color, uses 320x400.
    
    Speech:     Uses the standard Amiga voice, is very legible.
    
    Attention:  My 6  year  old  has  given up on it but my 4 year old
    loves it.  It lets  the  child  choose between a bunch of pictures
    which are colored by pointing the  mouse  to  crayon  to  choose a
    color and then pointing to the section on the picture to fill that
    section with the color.  There is also  a  drawing  program  and a
    program that shows the child the different crayons while  speaking
    the color.  My 4 year old  has  no  trouble  moving  around in the
    program, the user interface is great.
    
    Rating:     9 out of 10.
    
        First Shapes (First Byte)
    
    Ages        3 to 6
    
    Graphics:   Looks OK, I think this one is a MAC port.
    
    Speech:  Does not use the Amiga Voice, I think  it  uses the sound
    hardware to do it's own voice. The result is pretty good.
    
    Attention:   The  game  has  4  or  5  different  choices,  mostly
    identifying and building  things  from  the  different shapes.  I
    thought it would ware thin real fast but my kids are still playing
    with it.
    
    Rating:    7 out of 10
    
        Kinderama
    
    Ages:       3 to 6
    
    Graphics:   Standard stuff.
    
    Speech:     Ditto.
    
    Attention:  This one is  mostly  just  a  count  or add the number
    robots on the screen.  This  one  did  ware  thin  fast.   I don't
    recommend it.
    
    Rating:     5 out of 10
    
        
        Regards    Clint...
    

    PS..  Some of the most popular games with my Kids are the PD stuff
    like Amoeba invasion,  Tiles  (my  6  year  old will play this for
    hours) and Cards'O'Rama.   Also  the  old  standby Dpaint is still
    very popular.

Ages     : 17 and up

Graphics : This is basically a pretty picture from mathematical expression
           generator.  It sure does generate some pretty pictures, but it
           is not useful for rigorous graphing or mathematical analysis
           applications.

Speech   : None.

Attention: Will not hold your attention for long (20 minutes a shot after
           you figure it out), unless you are spellbound by fractals and
           mandelbrot sets.  Like many things it is painfully slow in high-res 
           or interlace mode, but it is ok in low-res mode.

Novelty   : Is very different and well packaged.

Rating    : 5 out of 10

Ages	  : 3 'ish to 7

Object 	  : Donalds nephews inherit a playground, void of equipment. You 
            then need to earn money to build a playground, doing various 
            jobs such as load baggage at the airport, switch trains, load-
            ing vegtables.... You will learn to count money when you are 
            paid and make change when you make purchases.  Upon the 
            purchase of equipment, it is delivered to the playground and
            using the mouse/joystick (maybe even keyboard) you take the 
            ducks to use the toys.

Graphics  : Nothing special; Good use of mouse or joystick

Speech    : None, though music can be toggled off/on and sound effects OK

Education : Learning to add/subtract money, given various amounts of 
            currency; Reading to sort the luggage/trains correctly.
            I think that the kids see this as a game rather than as 
            educational software, although it is both.

Kid factor: Not as good as Star Wars... maybe the first time the kids would
            need help, however after that there seems to be some satisfaction
            in earning thier own play equipment, etc...

Rating    : 6.4 out of 10

    In latest issues I've seen some very interesting product descriptions
    of educational software which claim will hold a young child's interest
    using sight and sound. Since I have one (20 month daughter to be
    more specific), I am looking for such software. I would like to get
    feedback from anyone whose kids played with :
    
    Polarware's "Seasame Street Crayon Series" 
    
    or 
    
    Aloha Fonts' "Uncle D's Con Sound Traition".
    
    
    I'd rather have her learn something on the Amiga than have her watch
    her old man ZAP things with Sidewinder.
         
    Lucio

I am interested in any information on the following package.

Perfect Score (SAT)---------------- Mindscape -------------22 $ 69.95 $ 40.76

I assume it is a port from the PC. Is it any good? What does it attempt to 
accomplish? Drill? Testing techniques? etc. Are there any other simular
products? 

I have an 8th grader. I feel with a piece of software like this one, the only
way you can buy it too soon is by getting it before it's ready or the one you
want comes out. I have not seen any reviews.

Any help appreciated. I will post my findings.

-Tom-

    Over the weekend I went looking for Mixed-up Mother Goose (?) and/or
    Donald Duck's Playground, but I couldn't find either so I thought I'd
    give "Barney Bear goes To School" a shot. By the time the weekend was
    over, I was looking for a gun.

              Barney Bear Goes To School (Free Spirit Software)
    
    Ages:       3 to 8
    
    Graphics:   Bearable (ha, ha), but nothing to write home about.
    
    Speech:     Uses AmigaDOS SAY, but some words aren't "spelled out"
                phonetically enough to be easily understood. 
    
    Attention:  My daughter (age 6) enjoyed the "paint" portion of the
                program, but because it failed to run properly (see below),
                the story section and the other classroom sections were
                frustrating.
    
    Rating:     2 out of 10.

    The program starts out with a couple of title screens along with some
    brief music. Then you are prompted to either go right to the classroom
    or go through a "story" sequence. This is a simple follow the
    instructions or answer a question routine with not much depth ie/
    Screen showing Barney getting dressed. The program prompts with spoken
    instructions ("...help Barney pick out the red shirt..."), the child
    selects the correct color shirt (a wrong answer yields a negative
    response with an explanation ) and then the scene ends. This might be
    okay for a 3 year old, but they could have gone into a lot more depth
    for an older child (what about the rest of his clothes; maybe matching
    colors and/or put the right clothes in the right place or left
    shoe/right shoe, etc.) Some scenes were a little better, but not much;
    ie/ Barney at the breakfast table with some food in front of him. The
    program prompts with a spoken ("blah, blah...should Barney eat a good
    breakfast?...") prompt and the user responds via YES and NO gadgets.
    If the child clicks on an object, they're given a description of the
    object (except for the cookie jar; a slight reprimand is also given),
    but the scene ends after the YES/NO is chosen.

    Once in the classroom, there are really no more prompts, the user just
    clicks on objects in the room until something happens. There's a quick
    rundown of the alphabet, numbers, shapes, but no interaction. The
    program just sorta talks at you. If you click on certain parts of the
    blackboard you get a slightly more advanced scene (shows an object and
    spells it out audibly and visually, then you must enter the letters
    from the keyboard; I can't picture an eight year old being excited
    about this for too long)  but there's no way to select any kind of
    skill level. There's also an easel you can click on, and it brings up a
    16 color flood-fill type paint program with about a dozen pictures to
    "color" and optionally cycle the colors, but there's no built in print
    or save facility.

    Now for the *really* bad news. This is a fairly new title (copyright
    1990) and the box says it runs on a 500/1000/2000 but 1 Mb RAM is
    required. I've got an A2000HD with 1 Mb of chip RAM, but this program
    was constantly guruing (is that a word?) at various places, especially
    during the story portion. It's written in GFA Basic and it makes
    "calls" to AmigaDOS for speech (via SAY) and sounds (sampled sounds via
    a sound PLAYer). The startup-sequence mounts the RAM disk and then runs
    the program. Then the program copies various files (say, play, run,
    endcli,etc.) to RAM:. This speeds things up a bit but it's still very
    slow between spoken sections  because it needs to "call" say and pass
    the text to it everytime it wants to say anything (and 95% of the
    prompts are spoken). Also, if you "stray" from any of the exact clicks
    required to complete a scene and select something else, it needs to do
    another call to SAY or PLAY, and you are almost certainly guarenteed a
    guru.

    I suspect that because I have a hard drive, the extra memory required
    for buffers, etc., is just enough to cause problems. I booted right from
    the floppies, but I guess because it's an autoboot controller (A2091),
    it still "sees" the hard drive. However, I can't believe that this
    program takes up this much memory. I've seen some games that run in a
    512K machine whose graphics and sound run circles around this thing. I
    spent a lot of time trying to get this thing to run without hanging. If
    I gave it a huge stack before running it (200K), it wouldn't load the
    various files to RAM: (device full) so there was no speech or sound,
    but it would run to completion. So I tried decreasing the stack
    gradually to get it to work. The best I got was a trashed hard drive
    after a guru (Error validating DH0: - key nnnnnn already set).
    I'm an animal lover, but Barney Bear nearly died a horrible death at
    the hands of its owner.

    The topper is that the "documentation" (8.5x11 sheet of paper folded in
    half) says nothing about a license agreement (although it is copyrighted) 
    or whether you can make a backup copy of the disks (2) or install it on
    a hard drive. There's no copy protection as far as I can tell, because
    it runs the same from the originals or elsewhere. Also, the registration 
    card states that they must receive the card before they will offer any
    technical assistance. I can understand this from an anti-pirating
    standpoint, but I'll be damned if I have to send it in just to call
    long distance (at my expense) to find out that it may not work. I
    suppose I should just send it in and give them a call, but this program
    just isn't worth the trouble. Anybody want to buy it cheap?

    Sorry to carry on so, but this whole thing really burns my butt, and
    I'm just blowing off steam. Ah, I feel much better now, thanks.

    Pete

    {The above stuff is really my own opinion and not that of my employer}

 Oh well, another bad program for kids...  Thanks for the review. I was
 interested when I saw an advert. in Amiga World, but you saved me some 
 more frustration. This thing lists for $50, doesn't it?!?

 I am still amazed at the HUGE difference in quality between even mediocre
 games and productivity stuff, and the best of educational stuff. No wonder
 so many elementary school teachers are computer phobic or computer 
 disinterested. And there is so much potential, especially with the Amiga!

 Maybe people will start producing programs with CanDo, Director or 
 similar programs that may not have the limitations the BASIC programs
 seem to have. I don't expect the machine code game programmers to move into
 the education market, but the current situation is ridiculous.
 Dave

PS. Paul MacDonald, who occasionally hangs out in this conference,
    has CanDo.  Maybe he'll take time off from adding serial boards to
    his system, and producing impressive club newsletters to write 
    a program for us.
    ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

    Re: .7

    > This thing lists for $50, doesn't it?!?

    It was on the shelves at System Eyes for $34.95. With the April 25% off
    special (members only? I can't remember, I've misplaced the flyer) it
    came to $26.25. A cohert of mine was headed that way tonight so I asked
    him to put it on consignment for me. You could ask Steve if you could
    try it out in the store and see how you like it. My guess is that it
    *may* perform better on a 1 Meg machine w/o any hard drive and/or
    additional floppy drives (not to mention killing every open window,
    background task, etc.) or one with more RAM.

    > Maybe people will start producing programs with CanDo, Director or 
    > similar programs that may not have the limitations the BASIC programs

    I'm seriously considering something along these lines. I haven't
    actually seen CanDo *live*, but I thumbed through the manual and it's
    very impressive. It seems perfect for the kind of thing I'd like to do;
    your basic "flashcard" style program for basic math, reading, spelling
    skills, but with the bells and whistles and the "point and click" stuff
    that makes a big difference, attention span-wise. And the best part is
    that you can really personalize things for the end user (buzz word for
    "the kids"). There are a few commercial programs out there that allow
    you to insert customized messages and boy does that make a childs face
    light up when they hear their name or favorite expression.

    >PS. Paul MacDonald, who occasionally hangs out in this conference,
    >    has CanDo.  Maybe he'll take time off from adding serial boards to
    >    his system, and producing impressive club newsletters to write 
    >    a program for us.
    >    ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

    Yeah Paul, how 'bout it? You're not going to depend entirely on the
    public school system, are you? Besides, you must have run out of
    expansion slots by now! ;^) Okay, okay; we'll spring for the yearly
    license fee to get your applications into the public domain...

    Re: - last few

    Regarding BB Goes to School, Bill ran it last night at System Eyes on a
    1Mb (512K Chip/512K Fast) A500 w/A590 without incident. He didn't go
    through the story section, however. Perhaps the fact that I have no
    fast RAM (1Mb FANG) could be the culprit? I'll have to go down there
    again and put it through the Petey benchmark. Anyways, it's on
    consignment for $18.00.

    Next victim ;^):

                    Mixed-Up Mother Goose (Sierra On-Line)

    This was mentioned in a more recent note (3084.last, I think), but I
    just had to elaborate a bit:

    Ages:       4 and up (according to the box)


    Object:     Adventure type "game" where the child must unscramble the
                mixed-up nursery rhymes by returning objects to their
                rightful owners (ie/ find the missing sheep and lead them
                to Bo Peep). While not classified as an educational
                package, it does involve some brainpower. Since the
                character can only carry one object at a time, he/she must
                remember the whereabouts of the objects.

    Graphics:   Actually pretty lousy, even relative to those "other"
                machines. This looks like another ported program (it's
                available on a lot of machines). Some of the scenes aren't
                too bad, but the color choices on some make it look awful.
                The oversized "pixels" make some objects just a blur until
                you pick them up (the object you're carrying is magnified
                in a box at the top right corner of the screen).
                Fortunately, the animations make up for the other
                shortcomings. And the 3-D landscape gives you a real
                "adventure" feel. You can also control the speed at which
                the animations unfold and the characters move about.

    Speech:     None, though sound effects can be toggled off/on. The sound
                effects aren't that great, but not a big factor to the
                overall game.

    Education:  Memory and some logic, but it's more of an adventure game.

    Kid factor: This is where this program really shines. My daughter loves
                to watch me play Faery Tale Adventure, but she's real
                dissapointed that all the heroes are men. She begs me to
                stop hacking and slashing and go see the sorceress, rescue
                the princess, or go after the witch. Mixed-Up Mother Goose
                prompts for your name and then asks you to choose from a
                screen of boy/girl characters, picking the one that looks
                most like you (hair color, etc.). My daughter knew exactly
                which character was "her" and was thrilled that "she" was
                doing the adventuring. Also, the childs name is mentioned
                several times throughout. And there are plenty of rewards
                and comical animations to keep it interesting. It comes
                with a poster of all the nursery rhymes used in the
                adventure and a map of the playing area, with little
                "windows" with clues behind them.

    Rating:     7.5 out of 10