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Lots of "interactive" CD-ROMs don't do anything more than let the user pick which video clip to watch first "Secret"'s click-and-experiment portions are exactly the right approach. You can also delve into the scientific history behind these exercises, watch a few reasonably well-chosen film snippets, and, best of all, experiment with off-screen activities, like using a paper airplane to play with the principles of lift and drag. You start by picking one of several real-world questions - why does glue stick? how do airplanes fly? - and "Secret" then lets you discover and learn for yourself. 2 (3M, Macintosh and Windows CD-ROMs, $59.95 for ages 7-15) makes you want to learn anyway (the point of the hamster question being to demonstrate the principle of geometric progression in number). How many hamsters can fit in a bathtub? You probably don't need to know that, but What's the Secret? Vol.
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I just need to get past this door." How much this teaches has a lot to do with the patience of the person using it - and the more patient kids are also more likely to, say, read a book in the first place. This is both good and bad it's easy to get immersed in the story, but it also becomes easy to focus on the game portion, leading one to resort to the hint button far too often and to casually dismiss Burke's lectures on physics and history with a mouse click: "Yeah, whatever. In its pacing and onscreen presentation, it resembles any number of first-person adventure games. Off you go, looking for usually obscure hints and clues that will help you to restore time and science to their proper functioning.
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This takes place in a series of time-twisted locales, where the normal sequence of history has been scrambled, leaving, say, a used-electronics shop next to a medieval apothecary. Are they interesting? Are they fun? And do they have anything to teach? Taking a stroll through a few of the better current titles, as well as some older, still best-selling ones, can tell a lot about what works and what doesn't.Ĭonnections (Discovery Multimedia Macintosh/Windows CD-ROM, $49.95 for ages 8 and up), based on the Learning Channel series narrated by author James Burke, challenges the player to find out what principles tie various artifacts together - for example, pencils and oscilloscopes.
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THE THING to remember about educational CD-ROMs is that they succeed and fail for the same reasons as any other piece of recreational software - or any book.