Each year at about this time I signal the beginning of the end of summer vacation with recommendations for educational software for students, teachers, home-schoolers and others who either need additional help or who want to get a leg up on fall term.
These programs, for everyone from preschoolers to high schoolers, also can be used by fogies such as me for brushing up on old skills and learning new ones. Truth to tell, I never mastered Algebra I five decades ago, and now, thanks to one of these programs, I can tell an exponent from a fraction.
Many of these programs, which I reviewed over the summer, have been updated for 2008, and come on DVDs. Previous versions came with up to 10 CDs, which required swapping discs every time you changed subjects. Unless otherwise noted, all are for Windows PCs and will run on Windows XP and Windows Vista.
"Preparing for Kindergarten": It can be customized for English, French and Spanish, a big plus for English as a second language teachers and new immigrants. After picking your language, you're given seven children's books to choose from.
Each page has a voice-over reader (or you can turn off the sound and read to your child). Then it's on to learning letters, words and alphabetical order. You can print out more than a thousand work sheets in color for all the lessons.
Each group of lessons can be tailored to your child's learning level. Math skills include addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, complete with work sheets. After that, it's on to paint and colors, drawing, geometric figures, and cut and paste. There are memory games, language and math games. The program is designed by educators for ages 3 to 5. $25.
"Elementary Advantage 2008": The DVD covers beginning math, reading, composition, grammar, vocabulary, phonics, earth science, biology, solar system and Spanish, along with the Britannica Student Edition Encyclopedia. It's for grades 1 to 5, and has hundreds of exercises and tutorials for every subject a grade-schooler is likely to encounter. $29.
"Middle School Advantage 2008": This DVD, for grades 6 to 9, has friendly, patient instruction for pre-algebra, Algebra I and geometry; reading, vocabulary and grammar; earth science (weather, solar system); U.S. history, all the way back to colonization; the basics of Spanish, French, German and Italian; and typing. $29.
"High School Advantage 2008": The DVD covers 10 courses with thousands of lessons, exercises, tutorials and quizzes and sample SAT questions. Subjects include Algebra II, geometry and trigonometry, English composition, economics, U.S. government (political science), world history, typing, biology, chemistry and physics along with rudimentary courses in Spanish, French, German and Italian. $29.
"Math Advantage 2008": The DVD has been updated to run on Vista, and its 10 CDs are now on one DVD. It's designed for grades 6 to 12, and features tutorials and exercises in basic math, geometry, pre-algebra, Algebra I and II, trigonometry, pre-calculus and post pre-calculus and real world math. $25.
"High Achiever Chemistry, Physics I and II and Biology": There are dozens of tutorials, followed by gamelike exercises and multiple-choice quizzes. Each of the four CDs contains a year's worth of work in each subject, but students can work as fast or as slowly as needed. Returning to a topic that was difficult is a mouse-click away. $25.
"33 Languages Deluxe": The DVD covers basic words, phrases, numbers, body parts, telling time, shopping and food -- all the things you need to get by in places where English isn't understood. As you navigate through the languages, two smiling tutors appear on each side of the screen. They lip-sync the words and phrases and tell you in no uncertain terms when you get a word or phrase wrong.
Included are tutorials and practice sessions in Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Chinese, Dutch, English (for foreign speakers), Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Punjabi, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Tibetan, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Zulu. $29.
If your student has a brand-new Windows PC, there are two excellent tutorials: "Learn Vista" ($20) and "Professor Teaches Windows Vista" (and XP and Office 2007 and 2003). It also has courses in creating web pages and PhotoShop. $29.
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