Survival

Crash

Overall 7/10

Rosetta McLeod 7/10

CRASH COURSE Rosetta McLeod A LITTLE LEARNING LESSON FOR THE FESTIVE SEASON? This month, with the help of a panel of children, Crash Course looks at some Chrismtas Crackers! First of all, though, there is some good news on the educational front. A new organisation, British Educational Software Associates, has recently been set up to improve the availability and distribution of educational software. Eight firms (ASK, Bourne, Calpac, Collins, Griffin, Hill MacGibbon, MacMillan and Widgit) have formed this new marketing consortium to help selected retailers service a market which, according to Roy Davey, marketing director of Collins Soft and Hill MacGibbon, is 'diffused and frustrated'. He feels, quite rightly, that schools have difficulty in finding a retailer who offers a good choice of software together with a fast ordering service, and who allows the customer to view programs before purchase. BESA has now appointed 200 retailers throughout Britain who will stock a 'core list' of 40 programs and will be able to meet orders for other titles from some 250 in the catalogue within 48 hours. Support for retailers will be handled by Proteus, the leading educational software distributor. This is a very welcome move, both from the point of view of schools and of home users. Up till now, most of the high street stores have paid only lip-service to the area of educational software, and it is hoped that the promotion of BESA in local newspapers and in information hand-outs to schools will begin to rectify matters. If the experiment proves successful, the consortium would hope to expand in 1986. More information about BESA can be obtained from BESA at [redacted]. But now on to this month's software selection, I asked a panel of children, ranging in age from 7 to 13 years, to look at the programs with me, and to decide whether or not they'd like to get the games for Christmas. Each game was awarded a score out of 10. SURVIVAL Producer: Sinclair/Macmillan (Science Horizon Series) Retail Price: £7.95 Age Range: Upper primary Author: Five Ways The programs in the Science Horizons series each concentrate on one key scientific idea and try to bring it alive for primary children. Survival is concerned with the basic principles of ecology (the interdependence of living things and their environment). When the program has loaded, pictures of six creatures (hawk, robin, lion, mouse, fly and butterfly) appear on the screen. The player chooses one of them, and has to keep it alive in its habitat by finding food and water and by steering clear of predators. A grid represents the world in map form, with ice caps to the north and south, and the player moves the chosen animal around, one square at a time. As the game progresses, the child will be building up a profile of each creature, based on the knowledge acquired about its energy requirements, predators, life span and so on. The useful booklet which is included in the package gives brief notes about the six animals, but of course children could be directed towards reference books to increase their knowledge. COMMENTS Control keys: T, Y, U, G, J, B, N, M move the animal round the grid, P to pause, C to continue, Q to switch sound off/on, K to see a key for the habitats, SPACE to speed up the action Keyboard play: responsive Use of colour: attractive Graphics: quite good Panel's comments: We quite liked it, but it was hard to remember the control keys. We learned a lot about the animals.