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Word
Mania KS2 |
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Contact: Topologika Software Ltd
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Word
Mania KS2 |
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Contact: Topologika Software Ltd
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Program evaluation Simon says: This is an outstanding piece of software which actually makes revision and practice of basic language skills fun - or at least as fun as is possible under a prescriptive national literacy strategy. The program has many strengths but a key one has to be, in our experience, that students actually like using it - which means they are more likely to learn from the experience? Towards the end of the summer term (in fact on the last real day of term) I sat successive groups of underachieving Y7-Y10 students in front of WordMania to gauge their reaction to the program which we were evaluating. At this stage of term I was uncertain what their reaction would be to a program which involved identifying homonyms, possessive apostrophes, double negatives, parenthetic commas . . . and much more. This isn't the sort of work I normally set on the last day of term! What happened was magic. Students asked if they could come back the next lesson and carry on - and the lesson after that and the one after that. One student (Y9 but R.A. c.9.0) stayed for four lessons playing against different students. Remember, to make progress through the game she had to correctly answer questions on many different literacy areas. And, after some initial scaffolding, she did so! What makes the program different is the option to play against other students - either on the school network or anywhere else in the world via the internet. This impressed the Y10 techie types who were in our student support suite - and that's not something that's normally easy to do. Initially I wondered just how easy it would be to set the program up to allow this mufti-player mode - both over our school network and over the internet. The only intervention I had to make was to specify the proxy server settings for our internet connection. Once that was done then the program just worked - seamlessly. The program is customisable in other ways also plus there is the facility to design your own mazes and add your own questions. The graphics are excellent and ran smoothly on our Win98-based Pentium 3 machines with around 400Mb. memory Installation was a breeze and even updated our DirectX to a later version. Neat. This version of the program is aimed at KS2 students but will fit well into a secondary situation - either with supported students or as revision for any student (or adult). Highly recommended. |
Program Details Topologika say: WordMania KS2 encourages pupils to practise basic Language skills whilst navigating mazes, on their own, in competition with friends on a school network, or even with other schools via the Internet. They win points by answering revision questions on Spelling, Punctuation, Comprehension and/or Grammar, in order to get past maze obstacles and outwit other players who may unexpectedly get in their way. With enough points to leave a maze, pupils can enter another, or win bonus points by tackling word puzzles such as Alphabet Invaders, Crocodile Tears, Word Searches, and Grammar Nibbles.
All users get all of that. But, on a network or across the Internet, some very special options come into play. Pupils can navigate a maze at the same time as their friends, or work with (or against) pupils in other schools, or even overseas. What's more, to make things strategically more interesting, they can drop question 'bombs' to stay ahead of other players... Joining in is as easy as logging on, and security needn't be a worry, because WordMania uses the Internet, not the Web. Like its fore-runner MathMania, WordMania can be set up to offer only the features you want. You can run it 'stand-alone' or in 'multi-player' mode. The more 'game-like' features can be reserved as rewards. Levels of play are completely under your control. If your 24-hour broadband connection doesn't get used as much as it should, WordMania could be part of the answer. Hardware Requirements A Pentium-compatible 200Mhz PC running Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 or XP with 64Mb RAM with DirectX. Whilst the packs will not run on NT machines, they can however be delivered from NT servers to workstations with a different version of Windows. The programs and files in each pack occupy around 50Mb of hard disc space. Due to the intensity of the graphics, all machines will need video cards with at least 4MB of memory. |
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