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From:School Zone
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See Product Page
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#1440 |
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11 of 11 customers found the following review helpful:
 Installer needs work. Uses a "workbook style" methodology, 2005-12-29
In general, the software quality seems to be top notch. The animations are bright, friendly, and smooth. We have experienced no crashes or problems. However, we have a few issues with the program, which is why we only gave it a 3 out of 5 stars:
I was a bit disappointed with the installer. However, these problems may be minor to most customers. By default, it installs into a cryptic folder called "sz80xx", rather than something descriptive, like "School Zone\Math 1", like you would expect. You can override this, of course. The complete installation actually takes place in two steps, the second of which happens when you run the program for the first time. This is a problem for people who have correctly set up the security on their machine to disallow non-Administrative users to perform software installations. To overcome this problem, answer "Yes" when asked to run the software during setup.
Also, there are no written instructions to copy the data off of the CD and onto the machine's hard drive. Without this capability, your son/daughter -- or you -- will always have to handle the CD's, popping them in and out of the machine.
My daughters seem to be 1-2 years ahead of the prescribed lesson plans in this series. For instance, in kindergarten, they are doing Grade 1 Math. Therefore, the games (which are rewarded to the child after finishing every two lessons) are too fast-paced for them. As a result, they get frustrated by them.
Conversely, the drag and drop method employed by the software is consistent with novices, requiring a click to "pick up" an object and a click to "drop" it. Any child who has been using a computer for more than a few months (like my daughters) will find this counter-intuitive and frustrating.
Finally, the "workbook style" methodology of this program was unexpected. We're accustomed to "game style" learning programs in which you:
a) choose a game, and
b) play it repeatedly until you've mastered it.
The only way to go back and repeat a lesson (i.e. to improve your skills) is to "erase" your entire workbook (all lessons) and start over. My daughters quickly moved from exercises that were too easy to ones that were too hard since in the "workbook style" you would typically only do one or two lessons in a day int he software and a few in the paper workbook (included). The idea of starting over was not desirable, either. The result was, again, frustration.
My recommendation is to purchase this software if you plan to work with your child and help them plan out a schedule in which you use the paper workbook and the software in conjunction, limiting the lessons to two a day. If this is your plan, then I highly recommend this software.
Purchasing this software and letting your child work with it on her/his own won't work.
41 of 42 customers found the following review helpful:
 Fantastic, 2001-10-30
I teach a first/second combination class and this CD works wonders with my first graders. They love the the updated certificates they get to print out each session. This is a program that I can use on going the whole year. It follows the standards and a child can work independently at it. The best feature is that a student can go back and fix errors they made. There are games that they play after they are down with a lesson. The last feature I was impressed with is the scratch pad. Students can use there mouse to figure out problems on the side of the problem, using a the scratch pad (just like using a pencil and a paper) I am very happy with using this in my classroom and so are the first graders.
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