daveb@xios.XIOS.UUCP (Dave Bullis) (12/02/87)
Does anyone have any recommendations for software for young children (4-5 years old) running on an IBM PC, (with Hercules board for graphics)? The child can find keys on the keyboard and is just starting to read. Any pointers on fun and/or educational S/W will be appreciated. Please respond by e-mail, I will summarize. advTHANKSance -- Dave Bullis, XIOS Systems Corporation, ...seismo!mnetor!dciem!nrcaer!xios!daveb 1600 Carling Avenue, Suite 150, Ottawa, Ontario. K1Z 8R8 613-725-5411 Canada.
flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU (12/08/87)
"My ABC's" is great. Has six games:
- one finds letters on the keyboard
- one finds single letters in a given word
- one finds letter pairs in a given word
- one has dancing pictures in response to hitting the right
letter or number
- one is a counting game
- one is a match-up game (what you probably played as a kid
with a deck of cards called "memory")
The graphics are amazingly good under CGA. The music is too. The
game has a sense of fun and delight that my daughter enjoys. The
author of the game did a really good job. It lists I think for about
$30 or $35. My two-1/2 year old now knows where most of the letters
are on the keyboard, and can navigate from game to game using space
bar, escape, return, and can read some of the words (with some help
from the pictures).
Paperback software, who distributed it, were real asses when I called
them for help. It is distributed on 5-1/4 inch disks, and my machine
has only 3.5inch diskettes (with an external 5-1/4 disk at work that I
use to convert). Well, it only runs on A:. So I called them for
help. Totally unhelpful, and they refused to refund my purchase price
even though the fine print specifically says their liability is
limited to refunding purchase price (which should have allowed them to
do that for me). Fortunately, CopyIIPC was able to make a runnable
copy on the smaller disks that allowed me to run it.
For a child who has outgrown My ABCs, Reader Rabbit is pretty
reasonable. It is not quite as well done, and the graphics are cruder
and look like something done on graph paper. Most of the games
involve various aspects of letter recognition in various three-letter
words, and one "memory" game also with a slightly larger grid, and a
variation where you match a picture to a word. It seems pretty good
and a reasonable value. (That one is also copy protected, which
presented problems for running on my system, but I was able to figure
a way around it). It is a little harder and requires a bit more
concentration (which is probably appropriate as a kid gets more skilled).
Margot Flowers Flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!{ucbvax|ihnp4}!ucla-cs!flowers
burton@parcvax.Xerox.COM (Philip M. Burton) (12/08/87)
My kids are 8 and almost 5. They have been using my PC for years, to play
games and just to doodle around with the keyboard and screen.
Among commercial software, both kids like King's Quest I. (It probably
helps that there is a "cheat sheet", complete with map, available on
many BBS's.
Kidwriter is popular with my son( almost 5). It allows him to set up a
screen with pictures and then write a story. However, it suffers from a
very inflexible user interface and inconsistent use of single letters to
indicate options. The author probably did not do enough testing with
children, as opposed to adults. Kidwriter is by Spinnaker.
Another Spinnaker product that I can't really recommend is Facemaker. It
is self-booting, which means that I can't load in a resident routine that
would convert screen graphics to proper output on my Epson printer. My son
would like to be able to create faces, and then print them out and color
them. Also not in its favor is an "animation" mode which is hard even
for adults to follow.
Gertrude's Secrets is a very nicely designed and executed game. My
daughter, over 8, enjoys an occasional game, even though she is really
too advanced for the game. It was obviously designed with children in
mind, judging from my kids' reactions. My son takes great pleasure in
changing the shape of markers in the "shape edit" room. He plays with
this game for hours at a time. (Great on a rainy weekend!)
A game which disappointed my daughter, and I found hard to install on
my hard disk was "Oz" or "Wizard of Oz". (I don't remember.) The publisher
had a classy-sounding name, Wyndham Hill, but the game was really out of
the dark ages of software, when anything that ran on a PC was saleable.
Although not strictly for kids, my daughter is beginning to discover
paint programs, and I'll soon have to get one.
In buying software for kids, I think it has been very helpful to have
return privileges, since it is hard to tell from a store demo if kids will
like the game. Additionally, I have an EGA card, and not all kids'
software will run under an EGA. Egghead Software
has a money-back, no-questions asked policy, which I have had to use.
My local store, in Menlo Park, California, has been very gracious about
returns.
Public domain/shareware software for kids is a vast area, mostly not
worth the trouble. Lots of p/d stuff is puerile, violent, or just plain
boring to kids. Much of it is also poorly designed, using only the
CGA and with built-in timing loops. (Runs too fast on my AT).
Having said that, I found that my kids like some of the Pac-man versions.
It's important to have an option to vary the game speed. An outstanding
game, which I will even post to comp.binaries.ibm.pc (if the moderator
reads this, and sends me mail) is WPK.
WPK, or word processing for kids, allows kids to write stories using a
very simple, but effective word processor. My son, especially, likes to
display text using a "quad high" font. Stories can be written, saved,
printed, and revised. An outstanding program.
One important consideration in "recreational" software is the difficulty
of winning or succeeding. To adults, it's OK to say that it takes lots of
trial and error to succeed. Children need more immediate gratification,
and I think that many games fail by making it almost impossible to "win".
This comment applies to both commercial and p/d programs. (Gertrude's
Secrets clearly does let kids "win".)
Aside from the quality of kids' software, a very real problem is the
continuing presence of copy protection and self-booting disks. Since
hard disks are cheap these days, it's reasonable to expect users to install
games on a hard disk. It is a bad idea to have kids handling floppies,
since they must be supervised closely, or you risk damage to drive and
floppy.
Fortunately for me, a friend has a COPYII option board, so I can make duplicates
of the copy-protected disk, but this is a poor substitute for no copy
protection.
--
Philip Burton burton.osbunorth@parcvax.xerox.COM
Xerox Corp. {backbone}!hplabs!parcvax!burton.osbunorth
408 737 4635 ... usual disclaimers apply ...mrk@gvgspd.UUCP (Michael R. Kesti) (12/10/87)
In article <780@parcvax.Xerox.COM> burton@parcvax.xerox.com.UUCP (Philip M. Burton) writes: >My kids are 8 and almost 5. They have been using my PC for years, to play >games and just to doodle around with the keyboard and screen. Mine are about the same age, and they too like to play computer. They're just beginning to learn about the value of a text editor. Sure is fun to watch them learn and discover new things! >Although not strictly for kids, my daughter is beginning to discover >paint programs, and I'll soon have to get one. Right! PC Paint (or "the drawing game") is great fun, especially if the child already enjoys drawing. >Public domain/shareware software for kids is a vast area, mostly not >worth the trouble. Lots of p/d stuff is puerile, violent, or just plain >boring to kids. Much of it is also poorly designed, using only the >CGA and with built-in timing loops. (Runs too fast on my AT). If it runs too fast on my AT&T 6300 (w/V30) I use a thing called slowdown. It's a TSR that attaches itself to the timer tick interrupt, and executes a null loop whose duration is proportional to the number supplied on the command line. For example, with a thing called Round42, I first execute slowdown 12000 from a batch file called r42.bat that then invokes Round42. Sucessive invocations accumulate, and remain in effect until the next boot. To create, cut out the following script and execute symdeb < slowdown.cmd I imagine that debug would work just as well. ------------------------ cut here for slowdown.cmd ------------------- N SLOWDOWN.COM A JMP 0118 DW 0,0 DW 1 PUSHF CS: CALL FAR [0102] PUSH CX CS: MOV CX,[0106] LOOP 0114 POP CX IRET SUB AX,AX MOV SI,005D MOV CX,000A SUB BH,BH MOV BL,[SI] INC SI CMP BL,20 JZ 0133 MUL CX SUB BL,30 ADD AX,BX JMP 0122 ADD [0106],AX MOV AX,3508 INT 21 MOV [0102],BX MOV [0104],ES MOV DX,0108 MOV AX,2508 INT 21 MOV DX,0118 INT 27 R CX 51 W Q ------------------------ cut here for slowdown.cmd ------------------- -- ============================================================================ Michael Kesti Grass Valley Group, Inc. | "Like one and one don't make two, P.O. Box 1114 Grass Valley, CA 95945 | one and one make one." UUCP: ...!tektronix!gvgpsa!gvgspd!mrk | - The Who, Love Ain't For Keeping
Isaac_K_Rabinovitch@cup.portal.com (12/12/87)
All this discussion of PC software for very small children has some
interesting implications. Don't get me wrong, I think the whole idea
is great and if I had small children I'd surely rather have them playing
with the computer than zoning out in front of the tube. But consider:
the next generation is gonna think that the ABCs are the QWEs.
Isaac Rabinovitch
Disclaimer: Just because I think you're wrong, doesn't
mean I don't think you're a fun person!
:-)