Some educational programs are packed in sturdy colourful boxes which you know must add unduly to their price, but at least they are a strong storage medium for school use. This program comes in a standard plastic cassette case surrounded by decorative but useless flimsy cardboard box/surround, which I dispensed with immediately after removing the instructions on a bit of card which were slipped in the back of the 'box.' The tape, recorded on one side, has three sections: sections one and two having three parts and section three having two parts. The sections can be accessed separately but the parts cannot (well, not without BREAKing into the program and fiddling).
'An educational game for 3-10 years,' says the title slip, which acts as a cassette insert. The scope given to this program by all its different parts should make it a good audiovisual aid in helping children to learn to tell the time. However, certain flaws mar its overall worth.
Section One deals with time in whole hours. Part One requires the child to stop the clock at a given hour by pressing any key. If successful, a mouse is drawn at the top of the screen, and when 10 have been scored the program goes into an animated (?) routine to the tune of 'Hickory, Dickory, Dock' before moving on to the next part of the section. And herein lies the problem. The method of reading the key-press is extremely insensitive. Normally the problem with infants using a Spectrum centres around the fact that they will insist upon 'holding' the keys rather than 'pressing' them. In the normal manner of things the key will then auto-repeat and cause all manner of problems. In the case of this program, however, you have to hold a key down firmly just at the right time for your press to register - certainly no hair trigger here! The programmer must have realised the inadequacy of the system because if the key-press registers at one minute to or one minute past the hour you will still be counted as right! Normally the clock starts off about 20 minutes before the time you will need to stop it at, and each minute jump is registered in about one second, but occasionally it will start off an hour and a half before the due time, entailing a wait of a minute and a half of real time - and if you cannot get the key-press to register then it REALLY is annoying! Part Two requires the child to type in the hour indicated on the clock face. No problem here - numbers, letters and clock face are all very clear, but there is no screen prompt to remind the child to press the ENTER key after typing in the number. Part Three sets a time on the clock face and then asks the child to stop the clock one hour later - same problem as Part One.
Section Two deals with time in minutes, or rather in lots of five minutes, i.e., five past or 20 to (but not 17 minutes past). The shading of the clock to give a graphic representation of quarters of an hour is very effective. Parts One and Two require the minutes to be typed in. If you should have typed 20 but typed 15 and yet realised your mistake before you pressed the enter key, you can just continue by typing 20 and it will push the 15 off the input space. (If you press SPACE, then 00 is registered on the screen for some reason.) Part Three is 'Stop the Clock' again. This time it is ridiculous. When you are teaching time 'to the minute' you really do require accuracy, but you can stop the clock at 5.14 and still get credited as 'Right' for the required time of 15 minutes past five.
Section Three is very useful for it deals with the very important manipulation of converting 'clock time' to 'digital time.' The proliferation of digital watches has been unfortunately responsible for many children failing to appreciate the real meaning of time told from a traditional clock face. The demonstration is clear, but it is followed by another 'Stop the Clock' exercise.
A great deal of work has obviously gone into this program and the gradation of the stages of learning has been well judged, but its overall effectiveness is spoiled by some of the flaws mentioned previously. Infants find the 'Stop the Clock' exercises almost totally impossible to control. With a little bit of thought and re-programming this would make a very effective and, indeed, good value program. As it stands, I know of quite a few 'Time' programs on other machines which work far better because they are so much more sensitive to the small-fingered user.
REVIEW BY: Phil MorseBlurb: CRASH REVIEWERS COMPETITION
In the first issue of CRASH (February) we ran a competition designed to discover the best reviewers of games from among readers. The results of this competition should have been announced in the third issue (April). We had, however, overlooked the fact that, as they say, everyone's a critic at heart. By the time the third hundred review dropped into the IN tray, we realised that there was no way it would be possible to process all the entries in time. Hence the one-month delay.
Blurb: WINNER CRASH REVIEWERS' COMPETITION
J. Singh, Hadley, Telford, Salop
RUNNERS-UP
(Not in order of merit)
Steven Wetherill, Kexboro, Barnsley, S. Yorks
E.Munslow, West Bromwich, W. Midlands
Gary Bradley, Glasgow
John Minson, Muswell Hill, London N10
Phil Morse, Welwyn Garden City, Herts
Blurb: WINNER - CRASH REVIEWERS COMPETITION
Jaswant Singh is 19 and lives in Hadley, Telford, with his family: mother, father, two sisters and brother. He went to Manor School, just down the road from where he lives, and he left with 10 O-levels and four A-levels. He now works for Lloyds Bank. The CRASH Reviewers' Competition isn't the first competition that Jaswant has won. In May 1982 he won second prize of £300 as an A-level student in a competition organised by Barclays, writing on teaching and the microchip. He was also a runner-up in a nationwide competition organised by The Observer and Whitbread of the subject, How the Chip Will Change Society.
Jaswant bought his first Spectrum in October, and says he prefers playing arcade games. He does not use a joystick, although he is thinking of getting one soon. We hope that Jaswant will be joining the team of CRASH reviewers very soon.
Blurb: Readers were asked to write three reviews of titles picked from a selection of 79 games, divided into five categories: Arcade, Adventure, Strategy /board games, Simulations, Utilities and Educational.
Each review was supposed to be of between 500 and 900 words. However, due to a rather ambiguous use of language (sorry) entrants were a bit confused as to whether they should write three reviews of this length or three reviews which together added up to this length. As it was our error, no one has been penalised for picking either figure.
As it turns out, it was just as well that there was a large selection of choice, but, in the main, the majority of reviewers opted for the more obvious games and there were numerous versions of Jetpac, Hobbit, Penetrator and Zoom. From among the utilities The Quill and Melbourne Draw proved favourites. We were pleasantly surprised by how many educational reviews we received, showing that this is a vital area of interest for quite a number of readers.
Choosing a winner and five runners-up has been a difficult task, not only because there were so many entries, but also because the standard was extremely high throughout. A factor common to many entries was the tendency to pick games obviously well enjoyed by the reviewer, thus allowing said reviewer to rhapsodise over the game's finest points rather than actually criticise it. It's always much easier to say nice things about something than to say unpleasant things in a constructive manner. On the other hand, there were a few entries which positively reveled in tearing a program to shreds as a sort of revenge against the computer game in general!
Blurb: THE WINNERS ENTRIES
It would only be fair to say that in the opinion of the Editor there were several entrants who were able to provide more detailed descriptions of the games than those that will be found in the winner's reviews. But the winner managed to combine most successfully the ability to enthuse over a game while at the same time keeping a sense of overall perspective. He was able to describe the games adequately and in a very personal way. Most importantly, all three reviews start off in a highly original and entertaining manner, creating instantly an atmosphere which makes the reader want to carry on reading.
As printing all the winning entries in one go would take up too much room, we have had to split them up into two sections. This month the winner, J. Singh, and runners-up John Minson and Phil Morse; next month runners-up Gary Bradley, E. Munslow and Steven Wetherill. The following month we will be printing some further entries which deserve a special mention. May we thank everyone who wrote in to take part in the competition.
Blurb: In addition to the winner and five runners-up, the following get a special mention, and extracts or whole reviews will be appearing in following issues.
Vic Groves, Regent's Park Estate, London NW1
A. J. Green, Toddington, Beds
Rob Holmes, Wirksworthy, Derbyshire
David Branston, Hall Green, Birmingham
S. Guillerme, London W8
R. Norfolk, Scholar Green, Stoke-on-Trent
H. J. Lock, Wallington, Surrey
David Dursley, Clifton, Bristol
J. E. Price, St Albans, Herts
Blurb: JUDGING CRITERIA
What we were really looking for were reviews that managed to provide a good, concise description of the game in question and combine it with a sense of humour, personal observation and, of course, an ability to write in a fluent, interesting way. We did say that entries would not be judged on spelling ability, although it would be important to be literate. In the event, there seemed to be very few bad spellers. A number of entries tried to ape the style of presentation as seen in CRASH, which was not necessary at all, although this did not affect the outcome of the final decision; and other writers steadfastly stuck to the format that other well-known computer magazines offer.
The winner and five runners-up have provided a varied selection of titles, and although it was felt that the winner stood out, he did so from the runners-up by a faint margin. All in all it was a hard Choice.
And so to the most important part - the results.
Transcript by Chris Bourne
