Every Body Has a Brain wins anEDDIE
The ComputED Gazette is pleased to announce winners of its 16th Annual Education Software Review Awards. The Awards target innovative and content-rich programs and websites that augment the classroom curriculum and improve teacher productivity, providing parents and teachers with the technology to foster educational excellence. Some selection criteria are academic content, potential for broad classroom use, technical merit, subject approach and management system.
Winners are selected from titles submitted by publishers around the world.
How do you get a 4-year-old child to sit in front of a computer, use a mouse, and enjoy learning interactively for prolonged periods? The secret is to populate the screen with dynamic characters, magical backgrounds, melodies, sounds and animations; and change the mouse/arrow into a colorful star or animated fireworks, luring the child into an intriguing adventure.
This entry by Morphonix is an audio-visual masterpiece, beautifully designed to capture – and hold – the attention of the preschool or early elementary child (and beyond). Every Body Has a Brain is one of the most innovative entries we have received: Creative and artistic settings, music, sparkly mouse cursors, stories, games/lessons and animated cartoon characters keep the interface alive and exciting while the child interacts and learns complex facts about the brain. The inclusion of mouse-over audio identification of the buttons and lessons is a feature that is often missed by those who design software for the nonreader.
The program is referred to as ‘An interactive musical brain game’ for Windows and Macintosh, but this understates its depth and breadth. The setting takes place, appropriately, in the brain of Phoebe Brainheart, a girl who loves to find out new things about the brain. Here, the child can explore each of four major areas of the brain: Brainstem, Cerebellum, Hippocampus and Cerebral Cortex.
Buttons and hotspots launch lessons that include pertinent science and history definitions and facts. The Brainstem unit contains Brain Train, where the child must identify the object that has a brain; and in History of the Brain – Reptile Roundup, the child moves the mouse over illustrations of dirt, leaves, grass and water to uncover remains of reptiles, learning facts about the brain of various species while improving motor skills. In the Hippocampus unit, dancing baby hippos joyfully reinforce the main lesson: How this part of the brain helps us to remember.
Every Body Has a Brain merited an EDDIE Award in the Early Learning – Science category. It can be purchased on a CD (Windows and Macintosh) or as a downloadable. Perhaps our only suggestion pertains to the CD itself, which would best serve this elegant program if it were self-launching.
