Thursday, September 30, 2004

Earobics home software: for when your child doesn't spend enough time online



They don't sound like "fun" games -- I'd need a tutor to apply them!

Update: I take back the above comments. I've purchased and installed the software. I tested under Mac (Mac Classic running inside Mac OS X 10.3.5) and Windows (98 in this case). The software is impressive overall, but it has some rough spots. For example, the software does not automatically set the screen resolution to 640x480. Almost all game software sold in the past 3-4 years has done this, so it's an odd omission.

I installed and tested on both Mac and PC. Worked well on both. Note that it requires Mac Classic, Apple doesn't sell that any more (Mac Classic does come hidden away on the install disks for the new G5 iMac).

That said, the kids really loved the Level One product. I was amazed. It appealed to them more than all of our Clifford Reading and other whizzier educational software. I think they found the exercises intellectually interesting. Things got a bit tense around the computer.

The home version is simply a limited version of the commercial product. It can track two separate users and a "guest".

Curiously I got a number of the sounds wrong myself. I would not be shocked to learn that I had some cognitive deficits in phoneme recognition -- I was miserable at understanding sounds in spoken French.

It's early going, but I think these may be well worth the limited cost.


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