The Unstoppable Rise of Children’s Educational Software!

Two decades ago educational software was a luxury item which most schools did not want to incur the cost of. In the twenty-first century it is just an normal routine element of the teaching resources encountered in all schools. In those years many new packages of children’s educational software have been introduced as the next indispensable resource for schools, only to disappear into oblivion within a couple of years.

A minute proportion of education software packages have been successfully integrated into the classroom in the longer term, but Aspex has created educational software which is still in daily use after ten or fifteen years! That is because our software helps pupils to enjoy themselves and at the same time acquire and improve skills which are vital in the twenty-first century. Skills such as controlling a mouse, moving and handling on-screen graphics, budgeting money, and generating ideas for designs, all of which are fast becoming essential abilities in everyday life today.

Survival in this ever changing world, at various historical times and in diverse cultural settings, requires vastly different sets of skills and knowledge. Survival in the wilderness, as Bear Grylls regularly shows us on TV, requires abilities such as rubbing sticks together to create a spark and start a fire, and knowing which plants have roots you can eat and which roots are poisonous. But such knowledge is utterly irrelevant if you are having dinner at the Savoy Grill, for that the required knowledge is how to read the menu, which knives and forks to use for which course and how to employ them!

Children’s learning is at least to some degree a process of acquiring survival skills, and at any single time and place there is a consensus on what children should be taught. Thus, well-born young women in Victorian England were taught to be lady-like, and encouraged to practise their skills in watercolour painting, playing an instrument, singing, reciting and embroidery. These were what they needed to know to acquire a husband of the right type eg RICH!

To be interested in science, Chemistry or Mathematics was regarded as quite unseemly for a Lady and therefore girls were never taught these subjects. My school life started in the late 1950′s, when most cars were still painted black, and instead of having fun with woodwork girls had to sit quietly and do needlework. I can also remember we were given a chalkboard and a stick of chalk for writing lessons when I attended, (and I haven’t got my bus pass yet!). What a massive technological jump has happened in the classroom since then! In the twenty-first century the first thing a child is faced with in the classroom is the omnipresent school computer with all its possibilities, kids educational software programs, school websites and a plethora of resources.

These days children don’t just learn to write, they even publish their own books! Computers and IT have become foundational to our children’s lives and learning whether they are at school or at home. However what they can learn by using the computer is dependent on good quality software and web-based content. Much research and consideration have gone into our Kids educational software products which has resulted in four genuinely content-free, open ended, cross-curricular design software packages for children, Spex for designing rooms in a house, Spexworlds! which is a dream to design a house and other places, tabs for 3D shapes, nets and modeling, and Shapes and Nets a program for children to investigate 2D shapes and 3D shapes.

Our educational software programs inspire children to use their own creativity to make a personal and unique design, perhaps a kitchen layout or a model of a rocket. Meanwhile the learning element just happens while children are having fun! All the educational software mentioned in this article can be found at http://www.aspexsoftware.com

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Educational Software, the Right Tool for every Occasion!

It seems only a short time ago that educational software, was a novel idea, and yet now it is a staple both in the classroom and on the home computer. These days educational software for children includes areas of learning from maths to music, from literacy to learning a new language. There are, to be sure, very few subjects that cannot be at least in part learned on a computer. To assist in the important process of becoming literate, a huge variety of kids educational software packages are produced which help the child learn to spell, some help improve their writing skills, some are intended to expand a child’s vocabulary, and of course there is an extensive range of beautiful interactive books on the market to help them learn to read.

For kids just starting to read there are some good phonics packages and there are special word processors designed for children too. Many schools now have their own website and children can publish their work on the web which is a great way to inspire them to get writing. Maths seems the most obvious subject for learning on the computer, and educational software for young children is available to help with counting, other packages concentrate on helping them learn the characteristics of and important words associated with 2D and 3D shapes such as squares, triangles and cuboids, some expose children to the vocabulary of maths, words like ‘bigger’,’ smaller’, ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘many’ and ‘few’.

As children grow older, educational software packages are made to help with learning their times tables, which is perhaps an improvement on simply reciting ‘six sixes are thirty-six’ and so on, by rote! Software exists to help with mental arithmetic, learning about and using spreadsheets, money, time and 2D and 3D shape geometry. Children enjoy using computers and educational software can give them an entertaining way to learn, with the advantage that a child can repeat something as many times as they want to, computers don’t get bored!

A well thought out education package adds variety and freshness to the experience of practising skills, reinforcing things taught by the teacher or learned from books. Also parents like to be able to help their children make progress, and acquiring suitable educational software for their kids to play with on the home computer is one way they can help their child get ahead. Kids educational software can help improve learning in a huge number of areas; there are packages covering almost every subject known to man. For example, Art. Young children are used to drawing with crayons, felt tip pens, paint and paper, and drawing and painting programs are a completely different and exciting way to create images. Children love cartoons, and now there is a way to create their own animations using special software, something to impress their Mums and Dads and friends!

There is a totally amazing number of software packages designed to assist learning. Some software gives kids the chance to become young composers, and there is an educational software which helps improve a child’s ‘ear’ for music. There is at least one cookery package, and that’s without giving a thought to all the packages covering history, science and geography.

You can even get kids educational software which helps them learn about the Moon, an excellent software is SpexWorlds!Lunar a Moon base game from Aspex Software. This is a fascinating program and gets kids involved in building an on-screen Lunar base, with modular pods, space vehicles, space men and even an alien being! The colour of the lighting can be changed from white to red to purple and by adjusting the lighting, kids change the location of the base to Triton or Io or the fantasy world of Krypton. They will also learn of the original 1969 Moon landing, as the software is provided with a Moonlander and they can take an on-screen Moon walk! SpexWorlds!Lunar Moon base game is for kids aged 6 plus and is available FREE for a limited time. All you have to do is visit Aspex educational software, download it and there you are, on the Moon!

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