Word Games with the Mr. Men

Crash

Rosetta McLeod

CRASH COURSE By Rosetta McLeod USING COMPUTERS IN THE HOME Quite often I'm asked to speak to groups of adults on the topic of computers in education. Most of the parents in the audiences seem to feel rather at a loss about how to encourage learning in the home situation. We've now reached the stage where a vast number of homes possess a computer of some kind, many of them bought in the hope that they will assist the children with their school work, or help them to cope with life in this high-technology age. Parents, however, are becoming increasingly concerned that the machines tend to be used in the main for game-playing - usually arcade games. Another worry is that girls seem to show less interest than boys in computers, and this is of particular concern to those parents whose daughters are aiming for a career in a modem office where techniques rely heavily on computers. It's hard to alleviate worries such as these, as there is really no simple answer. Young children often enjoy a large amount of parental support when it comes to using computers, and some of the early learning games reviewed this month are certainly of the type to encourage parent/child involvement. Older children, however, tend not to be given this kind of support, being left very much to their own devices. Programs like Special Agent and Car Journey are helpful in letting parents see the sort of related activities their children can be directed towards. Instead of taking a back seat, the adults may even be encouraged to work with their teenagers on the games. Certainly all children ought to have the chance to develop keyboard skills at least, and this means moving away from arcade games and joysticks. I do wish, though, there were more programs designed to appeal to girls - publishers please note! WORD GAMES WITH THE MR MEN Producer: Mirrorsoft Retail Price: £8.95 Age Range: 5-8 years This two cassette pack contains Mr Noisy's Word Game or children learning to read, and Read With Mr Bounce for more advanced readers. The first game helps the child to understand three sorts of words which sometimes cause confusion - opposites, comparatives and superlatives. There are nine short games in this section, the first four introducing words such as tall/short, high/low, wide/narrow and fat/thin, while the next two give practice in turning these adjectives into their comparative and superlative forms. The final three games provide an opportunity to practise all the skills learned. In all the games, words are large and easy to read and the graphics are most attractive. Read With Mr Bounce extends the skills already covered and introduces the understanding of words such as in, on, outside - the animated graphics show the meaning of each concept in a very clear way before giving the child the option of typing in the word which shows where Mr Bounce is. For this, a plastic overlay is supplied, displaying the letter keys in their lower case form. The overlay is fine for the ordinary Spectrum but useless for the Plus. Both Mr Noisy's Word Game and Read With Mr Bounce give the child the chance to obtain a printout, and the glossy booklet contains details on how to play the games together with colourful pictures of the characters. COMMENTS Control keys: ENTER, 1 and 0 for the easier games, letter keys for the more complex ones Keyboard play: very responsive Graphics: excellent Use of colour: very good indeed

Your Spectrum

Dave Nicholls 5/5 HIT

Roger Willis 5/5 HIT

Ross Holman 3/5 MISS

JOYSTICK JURY From their bench on high, our regular panel of jurors - Ross Holman, Dave Nicholls and Roger Willis - pass judgement on the latest games software! You're probably getting used to our joystick jockeys by now but, for the record, there's gamester supremo Ross Holman; the hairiest of hackers, Dave Nicholls; and the fastest reviewer on two wheels, Roger Willis. WARNING! Just in case you find our scoring system too confusing, here's what it's all about. The score out of five at the end of each person's review is based on their own experience of the game. But that's pretty subjective... so they also use the HIT and MISS system to indicate its potential as a commercial success. WORD GAMES WITH THE MR MEN Mirrorsoft £9.95 Dave: This is one of a series of educational programs. Included in the package arc two cassettes (one for each game), an explanatory booklet, and a plastic keyboard overlay which covers the alphabet keys and masks off the Spectrum keywords. The package is aimed at five to eight year-olds; to be realistic though, it's more likely to appeal to children at the lower end of the scale. On the first cassette is Mr iWoisy's Word Game, which is designed to teach words like 'small', 'wide', 'smallest' and 'widest'. There are nine different games to play, each of which can be selected from the main menu. Other games allow various combinations of reading and writing exercises ranging from matching up a picture with the correct word to choosing the opposite to a displayed word. The second cassette contains Read With Mr Bounce, which teaches position words like 'above', 'inside', and 'on'. Again, there are several different options to teach different uses of the words. The graphics are large and clear, and this is just about the best educational package I've seen on the Spectrum.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive