Educational Shareware for the PC
Robert 0' Leary
Sacred Heart Senior N.S., Killinarden, Tallaght, Dublin 24.

1 Two History programs
(a) PbGreek.
This program contains twelve pages of information, with graphics, about Ancient Greece. Topics include education, Olympic Games, Sparta, Warfare etc. There are two questions to answer, based on each page, as well as wordsearch and hangman games. A very useful aid to teaching not only this topic, but also, reading comprehension. ****
(b) Explore2.
Short passages of information about two explorers, Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo. Each passage is followed by a series of review questions.
**

2. Wordtrlx for Windows
A suite of four different games concerned with the practice of initial letters, silent 'e and vowel pairs. The games are enjoyable to play, with three levels of difficulty and excellent sound support. ***

3. Photorobot (Windows)
A superb face creation program, easily
the best available, and very similar to
the identikit program commonly used by the police. Face parts are selected, positioned and combined to produce extremely realistic images. Very popular with children - see who can make the greatest likeness of the teacher! - but also an excellent source of language development activities. Finished work can be printed or copied to the clipboard. This is the full, unrestricted version of the program, which will run until the end of 1997. *****

4. World Geography Clipart
Over 50 high-quality public domain graphic images of faraway places. Examples include Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower, Taj Mahal, Rome, London, Amsterdam, Venice, Egypt, etc. An ideal way for pupils in senior classes to illustrate their work in this area. As with the other clipart selections, the images are supplied in .PCX format. If you wish to use them in Creative Writer 1, they can also be supplied in .WMF format, if specified. ****

5. Fastype for Windows
An updated Windows version of the popular (Dos) shareware title, Fastype. Excellent graphics and interface for pupils or teachers who wish to improve their speed and accuracy at the keyboard. ****

6. Quizbuilder - replacement for Quizman
Undoubtedly the best quiz creation program available as shareware. Teachers can construct quizzes containing true or false, multiple choice or fill in the blank questions. The questions can be printed out or taken on the computer, and graphics and sound files can be included for a very professional result. Scores are recorded for each student if required. Needs Windows. *****

Authored Programs

7. CIties and Towns of Ireland
8. Mountains of Ireland
9. Rivers and Lakes of Ireland
10. Irish Counties

In the autumn edition of Primary Computing I introduced the shareware version of an authoring program Illuminatus to the library as an ideal introduction for teachers to try their hand at producing their own software. The four titles above were produced by myself using the full version of llluminatus 3. The aim is to provide a computer-based resource for pupils, to revise this area of the curriculum. As we all know, there is little or no educational software with direct relevance to the strictly Irish features of the primary school curriculum available, and I hope that my efforts will encourage other teachers to start producing programs which would be of benefit in those areas ignored by the commercial publishers.

All four titles share a common format:
at the start or the end of the program, the children can study the features to be tested on the appropriate on-screen map. In the quiz itself the pupils are required to identify a particular feature as specified. If correct, the next page! question appears: visual and aural responses are generated by the computer depending on the answer supplied. The pupil will not be allowed proceed to the next question until successful . I have included this feature in preference to a scoring feature to encourage perseverance and to aid the learning process. My intention with all four titles, is to offer pupils an opportunity to revise their knowledge of Irish geography in an enjoyable, effective way: all programs are interac-tive, with colour graphics, sound effects and a simple, attractive interface.
11. Children's Interactive Guide to Ireland's Wild Mammals Currently under construction, and available to teachers from mid-January 1997, this is an interactive reference to the mammals of Ireland for primary schools. Also authored with Illuminatus, this program is an attempt to provide pupils with an attractive but comprehensive guide to all Irish mammals. Each page contains one or more colour graphics of the animal in question, and a series of pop-up windows of information, in language accessible to children from about fourth class. The rationale behind this project was that when attempting to coordinate a project on this subject with fifth class pupils, I found it extremely difficult to source appropriate information without recourse to a large variety of text and reference books. Pupils derived great satisfaction from accessing material via computer-based reference works, particularly those containing colour graphics and lots of buttons to press! Each title is supplied on one high den-
sity diskette, in compressed format, and a setup file will install the program on to the hard disk, as well as an icon to the desktop. System requirements are as follows:
Windows 3.1 or '95
Approximately 14 Mb hard disk space (per title)
486 cpu recommended
Sound card necessary to hear sound effects

Note: the full version of llluminatus 3, which retails at approximately £120, is supplied on CD. As well as the program itself, it contains a large amount of multimedia resources, including clipart, sound files, buttons, icons and video clips. The authoring process involves the combination of such resources (or your own) to compile a page by page project or presentation. Each page can contain text, graphics, buttons (invisible if required) as well as sound, animation, and videofiles. It is a relatively simple matter to introduce pop-up
frames, hypertext links and special
page effects to enhance the presentation. Given its range of features, its suitability to educational applications, ease of use and low cost, llluminatus is, in my view, the ideal authoring tool for any teacher who wishes to get started in electronic publishing.

Obtaining these
Educational
Shareware
Disks
Teachers who wish to inquire about any title in the
shareware library, including
the authored programs should write to me at my school
address, or email me at olearyr@iol.ie.