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Educator Reviews

Children's Technology Review ( Formerly Children's Software Revue )

corefx Three Level Review

We don't throw around five star ratings. In order to get one, a title needs to be the best in it's category, have quality content, and empower a young mind. That's why we were so thrilled to find corefx Three Level.

corefx Three Level, 5.0 stars, Core Learning Ltd., $54.95, ages 5-up. Once you start doodling with this simple, powerful graphics program, you simply can't stop. Somebody finally listened to the masses and made a reasonably priced graphics program that any child can be successful with. Take the drawing palate - you get 12 types of art tools, in any color or tip size. You can scribble with wax crayons - the harder you press, the darker the line - or let the watercolors bleed into a silky parchment. Every feature on our creativity wish list was covered: unlimited levels of undo (or redo, if you want to put your mistake back ), a nice collection of commercial free, resizable clip art, and the ability to easily add text to your work. The standard pull-down menus are familiar, often duplicating the icon menus, increasing your chances of making things work.

If you have children (or say, work with a room full of wriggling Kindergartners), you'll appreciate the ability to simplify the menus, with a beginners level. Advanced users will find features even Photoshop doesn't even have... coreFX Visual Effects like a tutorial on how to make animated graphics, and a quick redraw feature that can fast-forward through your project, one stroke at a time. Like a digital Swiss army knife, the program successfully opened a variety of file formats, so you can pull in a JPG straight out of your digital camera, add some text, and create a cover for your family DVD. Trial versions, that will work for 30 days and have print/save features disabled, can be downloaded at a variety of shareware sites. The program runs on newer Windows computers - there is no Mac version. All in all, this is the best consumer level drawing program on the market, for both children and adults.

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Calculation Skills Vol.4 Review

Calculation Skills Series 4 - Multiplication and Division - Advanced Level, 4.0 stars, Core Learning, $19.95, ages 8-up. This is a set of dry, carefully managed electronic flashcards. After a learner account is setup, learners can sign in to complete timed drills that are given without immediate feedback. All answers are entered using the numeric keypad. After a set of 10 questions, a report is given. A separate teacher (or helper) module is used to manage a child's records. The program can handle from one to eighty learners. So if you're an elementary school on a budget looking for a no frills supplementary math curriculum, and you don't have web access, you can't beat the price ($25/80 children). This program doesn't "teach" - rather, it administrates. The school version manages a large population of registered students and sells for $24.95 for a single station; the home version manages 3 users at a time and sells for $19.95. Available in Spanish and French.

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Health for Kids Series Review

Health for Kids Series, 4.6 stars or , Core Learning, ages 7-10, Windows, Macintosh. The two volume Health for Kids Series provides a fun tour of the human body, covering how it functions and how it works to stay healthy. The two titles are Explore Your Health (with nine animated tutorials such as 'Alluring Alveoli') and Explore Your Body (nine tutorials such as 'The Tongue of Terror'). The interface is well designed and very responsive. There is no record keeping. This is a good reinforcement activity for home or school use. Note that a series for older children is also available, called Health Beats. Recommended.

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Family Health Series Review

Family Health Series, 4.5 stars or , Core Learning, 9-15, Windows, Macintosh.
Designed to accompany the Health for Kids Series, this is a well designed, responsive set of five programs. Each provides guided tours of content typical of physical, emotional and social health courses. There are quizzes, games and colorful resources that can be incorporated into projects. Just put in the disk, and you have a set of simple activities, with a quiz for each key concept. There is no record keeping and not much chance to apply the knowledge, but the design is very engaging.

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