THE ABC OF SIMPLE KEYBOARD DRILLS

Theodora Wood looks at reading programs

The use of computers in teaching literacy skills, at a very early age and later as the child becomes more adept at recognising and communicating the written word, inevitably entails the gaining of skills with the computer. The use of the keyboard to answer on-screen questions and commands reinforces that aspect of educational computing.

That is nowhere more true than of the many alphabet programs on the market. Learning the alphabet requires not only the ability to recognise and differentiate between shapes but also to match shapes to their appropriate sounds. Without an adult to speak the sounds, the alphabet games become merely a matter of keyboard training. Letters and Numbers, Jimjams Software, Spectrum 48K, £4.95, is an example, where the child has to press the matching key to the letters which appear on the screen. If correct, the picture appears with sound and animation, unlike Alphabet - Widgit, Spectrum 48K, £5.95. The use of voice synthesisers should alleviate this problem somewhat.

abc... Lift Off - Longmans, Spectrum 16K, £7.95, is slightly different in that the child has to match a picture to a word and its initial letter in a game of snap; the child has only to press S to indicate a match. When six correct answers have been given, a rocket takes off. The action takes place quickly and is best-suited to be used as a consolidation routine, after a child has a knowledge of the shapes and sounds of the alphabet.

Alphabet Games - Blackboard Software, marketed by Sinclair, Spectrum 48K, £7.95, immediately seems better value in that there are three games in the one program. There is also the possibility of customising the program or incorporating routines from it into programs a parent or teacher may be writing, and the cassette gives hints on that.

Blackboard has allowed for that in all its programs, producing a degree of flexibility not found in other software. Once LOADed, the program offers the choice of three games, Random Rats, Invaders or Alphagaps. After the child's name is entered, there is then the choice between upper- or lower-case letters. The speed is fast, and can obviously be changed, but that adds to the arcade-style fervour of both Random Rats and Invaders. Both games are unashamedly keyboard trainers, matching lower- and upper-case letters. If played with a child who shouted the sounds while a parent types them it can prove to be a good practice session on this level.

In Random Rats, rats appear on the screen at intervals and a white block, the gun, moves across the screen. The child has to press the letter which appears on the gun to zap a few rats. In Invaders the child has to press the letter which appears on the alien spaceship to prevent it handing by blowing it up. At the end of both games the player receives a certificate if a ZX printer is attached.

The third program in Alphabet Games features training in another kind of skill that is the order of the alphabet, important in the use of indices for filling and retrieval purposes. Alphagaps shows the alphabet on the screen with some missing letters. The child has to fill the gaps with the correct letter from left to right.

Sinclair has also released five programs recently which foster the whole word approach to reading as well as the use of the alphabet. Learn to Read 1-5 - Sinclair, Spectrum 48K, £9.95 each, provide a range of activities with a structural approach to teaching the reading process.

All the programs feature the animals from the reading scheme, Meg the hen, Sam the fox, Jip the cat, and so on, and are very simplistic in their textual content. The year 1950 was, after all, pre-television for most children and the lack of sophistication is evident in 1984. They eschew such criticisms as sexist, which are directed at many of their contemporaries such as Janet and John, but overall have little connection with real life.

Learn to Read 1-3 runs on a roughly similar format. Once LOADed, the menu appears, a box moves over the names of the activities and the child has to press a key when the box surrounds the chosen task. Names introduces new words on all three programs, ranging from the names of the animals to the last word in a sentence containing the words learned in previous programs. Those are shown at the beginning of the program to be read by an adult and then tested. In Learn to Read 1, one animal is left on the screen with a list of all the names; the child has only to press a key when the moving box is over the correct word. By the time Learn to Read 3 is attained the same task includes reading a sentence and matching two words with objects which appear at the top of the screen. If correct, the word is written in big lower-case letters.

Kim is the next program on the menu increasing in difficulty over the range. It is a simple memory game where pictures with words or sentences appear on the screen and then one disappears. The child has to spell the word on the keyboard; if correct, the picture and the word appear again. That is repeated until all the words have been tested.

Spell, the next game, is repeated on all three programs. In one all the animals appear on the screen and then each is labelled in turn; the child has to spell the word on the keyboard. After five attempts the computer gives the correct letter. In Learn to Read 2 bars of labelled colour appear at the top of the screen and then a sentence appears on the lower half, for example Meg the ---, and the child again has to spell the word; if correct, the animal is coloured by a dripping pot of paint and the sentence is completed, Meg the hen is yellow. A score bar builds at the side of the screen with each colour. Learn to Read 3 provides the child with a multiple choice of similarly-spelt words to fill the gaps in a sentence. A similar score bar operates as in the previous program.

The final choice on all three programs is a version of the perennial educational game pairs, called Card. Over the span of the three programs the number of cards increases from eight to 12, from matching pictures, through matching pictures and words to matching pictures with their initial sounds - the first introduction to phonics in the whole scheme. The child has to ENTER the numbers of the cards to turn them over.

Learn to Read 4 is devoted to teaching alphabetical order and is much more accessible than the previous activity discussed, Alphagaps, found on the Blackboard Alphabet Games. There are three choices - NEXT, MIDDLE and FIND. NEXT shows the complete alphabet, upper- and lower-case, printed to a catchy tune. Three letters appear on the screen in alphabetical order and the child has a picture clue to help ascertain the fourth letter, as well as the alphabet at the top of the screen.

In MIDDLE the child is presented with three boxes, the outer two of which contain pictures and letters and the child has to guess the middle letter. After five incorrect attempts at either of the activities, the letter is given. FIND can be slow or fast - pictures in alphabetical order move across the screen; when there is a gap the child has to press the appropriate letter on the keyboard. At the end there is a house with the entries missed in the windows.

The fifth tape is a series of examples and exercises to aid the learning of all those positional words, such as on, top, bottom. These words, although common in written text, often prove a stumbling block for early readers.

As all the programs are based on the same animal characters, it is more difficult to imagine using the useful routines found in such a program as Learn and Read 4 out of context, and Fisher-Marriot has allowed no provision, unlike Blackboard, for doing so; CAPS SHIFT BREAK causes the program to crash. Also because the scheme relies almost completely on three-letter words, there can sometimes be nonsense sentences for the child to complete.

For older children, Star Reader - Scisoft, Spectrum 48K, £6.95, is aimed at the six-to-11 age group and provides training in the meaning of words and their position in the context of a written piece of text. There are three levels of reading difficulty and two choices of activity. At each level a passage of text is shown on-screen with some words missing; the child has to ENTER the words from a choice given at the bottom of the screen. At level one the second choice of activity is to sort rumbled sentences, while the alternative choices for levels two and three concentrate on dictionary skills and filing activities, both useful for information searches.

Castle Spellerous - Blackboard, Spectrum 48K, £7.95, flashes the word on the screen before the child has to spell it. The object is to release the princess from the wicked magician's palace. It is well-realised graphically and interesting, with sudden surprise attacks fended-off by pressing the appropriate letter on the keyboard. There is a choice of 10 types of words, for example 'ea' words; the word lists can be changed and the exposure time to the word can be regulated to suit the child concerned.

Scisoft has produced a similar package in Wizard Box - Spectrum 48K, £6.95, - the words do not flash on the screen but can be recorded on tape. The problem of synchronisation could become acute for a child not accustomed to tape recorders. Hangman programs, either typed from books or akin to the version found in Punctuation Pete, are probably just as effective and interesting as a spelling tester.

Blackboard has also released four programs to help with punctuation - Capital Letters, Early Punctuation, Speech Marks and The Apostrophe Spectrum 48K, £7.95. The titles give an obvious hint to the contents. All the programs give examples of the use of punctuation and then test the child with a piece of text on which to practise. A little stick man moves over the text and the child has to stop him at the correct place to insert the punctuation marks.

If a ZX printer is attached, a certificate is printed with the number of correct answers and at the end of each set of activities there is a game. Heinemann has covered this ground with one program operating on three levels, Punctuation Pete. Unlike the Blackboard programs, there is no opportunity to change the text and it is therefore a much less flexible package.

Finally, 40 Education Games for the Spectrum, by Vince Apps, Granada, £5.95, is a cheap way of providing programs in this field. It includes a spelling test, Hangman, and speed reading as well as mathematics routines.

All the programs reflect current educational emphasis on drill and test, and are electronic workbooks. They familiarise a child with the keyboard but often than that offer very little which is new. A more creative approach in the field would be to concentrate on the computer as a writing tool, as adults would use it, to refine and correct a piece of written work.

Heinemann, 22 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3HH

Jimjams Software, The Radleth, Plealey, Pontesbury, Shrewsbury SY5 0XF

Longman Software, Longman Group Ltd, Longman House, Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex CM 20 2JE

Scisoft, 5 Minster Gardens, Newthorpe, Eastwood, Notts.

Sinclair Research, 25 Willis Road, Cambridge CB1 2AQ

Transform Ltd, 41 Keats House, Porchester Mead, Beckenham, Kent

Widgit Software, 48 Durham Road, London N2 9DT

FIRST STEPS TOWARDS PAPERLESS LEARNING

Theodora Wood considers the current state and the potential of educational software.

Computers have now found their way into approximately one in 10 British households. Half a million Spectrums alone have been sold and presumably at least twice as many adults and children have unwrapped their cartons and plugged-in their hardware. Some will have caught the programming bug, others are small business users, and a large proportion have been shooting-down the alien hordes.

Software houses were quick to supply the games market and some have provided educational software but it is only recently that the numbers of educational titles have risen, with the large educational publishing houses realising the potential of the market, complete with glossy packaging and nation-wide distribution. At present Britain lags behind the U.S. market, both in the range and number of educational programs available, and is following roughly the same pattern of development.

The biggest number of programs available, for both the Spectrum and ZX-81, are of the rule-drill variety. They operate in the same way as the most traditional methods of teaching, by showing examples of the subject to be taught and then testing, sometimes by games. They can be divided into those for the younger age group - three to nine - and those which are aimed at older children as learning packages.

For the younger children the lack of reading skill places a greater emphasis on the use of graphics, animation and sound in the programs used to teach bask skills such as letter recognition, counting, simple mathematics. It is important with programs such as those that there should be a substantial element of interaction with the computer - children love pressing buttons. The testing part of the programs provides for that in most cases and duplicates the worksheets and workbooks used in schools throughout the country in electronic form.

First Numbers - Collins Educational, 16K Spectrum, £5.95 - is a series of five programs on one tape illustrating the concept of the electronic workbook. Instead of the examples remaining inert on the page, they bound round the screen in full colour; hopping frogs, seals bouncing balls on their noses, and elephants moving across the screen, rather too slowly, to the tune Nellie the Elephant, all emphasise the numbers one to 10. A program illustrates how to write the numbers by first drawing them on the screen and then flashing arrows following the direction of the pencil, identical to a workbook, except that there the arrows do not flash.

In contrast, there is Alphabet - Widget, 48K Spectrum, £5.95 - a program to teach letter recognition which uses no on-screen movement to illustrate its point. Its use of the Spectrum sound capability is lamentable, as the reward for a correct answer is the same for every letter, and can become extremely tedious even for the youngest child. When attempting to teach letter recognition, which is essentially a sound/shape matching activity, it is important that an adult should be present, as without a voice element the objective cannot be realised.

For the younger child who has little or no reading ability, better capability of the Spectrum in the area of colour, graphics and sound make it a superior machine to the ZX-81. Moving up the age range, a considerable number of programs operate on the electronic workbook level, from junior up to 0 level and beyond, and they are widely-available either at department stores or by mail order.

The ZX-81 appears more regularly in those titles, where more on-screen text can be used and flashing graphics are not so important. That kind of program would be a valuable aid to learning for the motivated child and for examination revision. Rose Cassettes and University Software specialise in that kind of programs.

Quiz programs are an extension of the question-and-answer format, such as the ones produced by Psion - 16148K Spectrum, £6.95 - for geography and history. Time Traveller - John Wiley, 48K Spectrum only, £9.95 - extends the scope by using the format of an adventure game, complete with wild animals, soldiers and priests, at the same time testing a child's knowledge of history through having to answer questions on historical fact correctly before passing through the time warps from 2000 BC to the present. This type of quiz would obviously have more attractions than the more straightforward versions, and would be more entertaining for groups.

All the programs mentioned so far are an extension of traditional teaching methods and provide a paperless way of learning subjects as diverse as O level French revision and the history of inventions. For the younger age groups they could be a valuable aid to learning basic skills, if used for short periods, and should be compared to other hardware aids such as Speak and Spell, the Talking Computer and little Professor to assess their effectiveness.

They also provide an introduction to the use of the computer and its keyboard. In the short term a child's interest would be retained probably by the novelty value of using a computer but that may later prove ephemeral as electronic workbooks become a more familiar feature at home and at school. Older children could use them in conjunction with their studies to clarify and identify areas on which they need to concentrate.

Simulation programs present a real departure from the electronic workbook and use the ability of the computer to deal with interactive variables to the full. Simulation programs at their best place a child in a real situation, engaging attention in an imaginative way. Again, the superior Spectrum graphics and colour invalidate the use of the ZX-81 and most titles are available for 48K Spectrum only.

Heinemann has produced a package for the eight-to-12 age group, Ballooning, which is accompanied by a glossy booklet explaining ballooning, with its history, development and suggestions for further activities. The balloon moves over a simulated landscape at the top of the screen while a child interacting with information on the dials placed below - altitude, temperature, fuel, rate of climb or fall - controls the upward or downward drift of the craft.

The child can stop the action to make a decision more coolly or mark position on a graph relating to altitude and distance, thus simulating a barograph. By practising at the controls of the balloon, a novice balloonist can execute various missions set by the program, some of which are extremely complicated, and in so doing become aware of the interaction between the temperature of the air inside the balloon, its rise and fall and its limitations as a flying machine.

The variety of other activities suggested in the accompanying booklet ensures that the program is open-ended and the concepts introduced in the package explored in different ways. Meanwhile, arguments rage as to who has achieved the most number of safe landings. Flight Simulation - 48K Spectrum, Psion, £7.95 - and to a lesser extent Nightflite - 16K Spectrum, Hewson - together with a 16K ZX-81 version, are similar programs suitable for nine-year-olds upwards and continue the theme of flying a machine but with greater difficulty level. Realtime means precisely that and there is no stopping the action to assimilate the information on the dials.

Map reading and basic navigational skills are also needed to move the aircraft round the landscape in the case of the 48K version, and the impression of reality is enhanced by being in the cockpit, seeing the landmarks below, and experiencing the tilt of the aeroplane in relation to the horizon, as well as the dizzying effect of rushing towards the ground at an increasingly frightening rate.

Simulation programs prove an imaginative vehicle for the introduction of the terminology used and the concepts involved in a particular activity and accomplish it in a different way from the rule and drill programs; instead of learning by example a child learns by the consequences of actions, albeit within the limitations of a simulated micro-world.

Learning by direct experience is more valuable than learning by rote and one would expect that more programs of this kind would be available in 1984, to introduce children to a wide variety of concepts and situations.

There are also programs for both the Spectrum and ZX-81 which operate in specialist areas not covered by the rule-and-drill format. Programs such as Firework Music and Tuner - 16/48K Spectrum range for 16K ZX-81, Software Cottage, £5 each - introduce children of almost any age to the basics of musical notation, pitch and keyboard use, and are ideal for use where a household has a computer but no musical instruments as, sad to say, only a minority of children retain an interest in playing music beyond a certain age.

Bridge Software produces a program, Night Sky - 16K Spectrum, £8.90 - which shows the stars visible at any time of the day or night from the Midlands - 0°, 52°N - on any day of the year. The second program in the pack shows the stars appearing in order of magnitude, with the 20 brightest stars named. Although operating within a specialist field, this type of program is of note as it adds an extra dimension to the star maps in books; moving the time on hour by hour shows the viewer how the stars rise and fall throughout the night and their positions throughout the year.

It also gives city dwellers a chance to look at the stars which are rarely seen through the orange glare of street lights and seen even more rarely at 3 o'clock in the morning.

The state of the art of educational software for the Spectrum and the ZX-81 introduces children to the keyboard of the computer - just watch a three-year-old press ENTER - and the notion of paperless work while reinforcing the learning processes involved in gaining skills which are basic to any educational curriculum. They can also introduce new concepts in an exciting way through the use of simulation techniques. None of them however, deals with the use of the computer in the programming field.

The Microelectronics Education Programme was designed initially for use in schools and contains some programs which teach skills which are the stepping stones to logic and programming techniques, as well as the more usual rule-and-drill programs. At £24.95 per pack of seven to eight programs, it seems rather expensive for home use but its use in schools is a selling point for distributors such as W H Smith.

Farmer introduces problem-solving and reasoning to the seven-to-11 group, while Watchperson does a similar task for the eight-to-11 group and includes route planning. Mazes are a graphic way to introduce logical processes and many of them are available in the games section of the software departments of stores.

To learn programming as a technique, the most innovative and child- centred way is to use Logo, a high-level language developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the guidance of Seymour Papert. Instead of using the computer to help a child or young adult to learn certain skills, the user programs the computer to execute commands. Logo enables children from about nine upwards to achieve results which would be much more difficult to achieve using the Basic language common to the Spectrum and ZX-81.

By the use of simple commands, a child can instruct a robot/turtle to move round the screen or on the floor, drawing as it proceeds. Imagine telling someone to walk round a square shape; walk 10 steps, then turn right; at that point it would be absolutely essential to know how many degrees to turn through, otherwise the shape would have no chance of being a square. Similarly with Logo and it is in that way that the value of such a program can be seen, as geometric functions are learned not by looking at a text book but by practical use of them in an activity which has been chosen by the child.

Logo does much more than introduce children to geometric function, however, because by choosing a problem, like drawing a house, the child has to split the activity into its component parts - roof, windows, chimneys - and find the best way of achieving the desired result. That type of problem-solving can be applied to any number and variety of activities and the adult version is well-known as critical path analysis, involving the exploration of logistics to determine the order in which activities are executed.

Logo also introduces children to the basic concepts of programming in a simplified form - to loops, nested loops et at - and for those who have no immediate knowledge of, or affinity with, those concepts, its simplicity is an easy introduction to them. In future years robots and artificial intelligence will enter many areas of life and a knowledge of the logical way in which a programmable machine works will undoubtedly be a skill which many will need to learn.

Snail Logo - Spectrum 48K, CP Software, £9.95 - is an example of this type of program which can be used either with the Zeaker turtle on the floor or displays, if desired, a snail moving on the screen.

The documentation with the program is excellent, describing the concepts behind it and giving examples of programs to try. They lead the novice from simple routines to more complex ones involving the use of named procedures - subroutines - and variables. Although there are ample facilities to copy the program being worked on, there is no means of saving them, which is very irritating, as obviously children might wish to evolve a program in the space of days or weeks. It would be better also if the snail could be seen on the screen at the same time. No doubt other versions of Logo will be introduced in the coming year.

Looking back on the development of educational software at the start of 1984, the main impression is that the field has scarcely been explored. Two obvious areas where development is necessary for the Spectrum and the ZX-81 is a simple word processor allowing children to type-in a piece of writing and then correct it, and the interactive database program similar to that of the Tree of Life which runs on the BBC micro.

Potential exists in the simulation/adventure format and the use of Logo to stimulate children into areas of activity which would be impossible without the use of the computer. While rule-and-drill programs can be a pleasant way of learning basic skills and an introduction to the computer and its keyboard, their over-use could have the opposite effect to that desired by deterring children using computers for life.

So what developments can we expect in the next few years? Interactive video must surely be an area to be explored. Based on a combination of personal computers and video tapes or disc players, interactive video will expand the use of the computer as an educational tool by introducing real speech into the learning process and enabling children to interact with the pictures.

After that, perhaps children will learn to program holograms to dance round the room or a myriad of small independent robots will be whizzing round when fed their programs. Educational software? We have only just begun.

Bridge Software, 36 Fernwood, Marple Bridge., Stockport, Cheshire SK6 5BE

CP Software, 17 Orchard Lane, Prestwood, Great Missenden, Bucks HP16 0NN.

Rose Software, 148 Widney Lane, Solihull, West Midlands 8B91 3LH.

Software Cottage, 19 Westfield Drive, Loughborough,. Leicestershire LE11 3QJ.

University Software, 29 St Peters Street. London N1.

John Wiley & Sons (Sulius Software), Baffins Lane, Chichester, Sussex PO19 1UD.

Collins, Widget, Heinemann and Psionare widely available at leading department stores.

EDUCATING, PETER?

Peter Shaw takes a look at some educational software packages for the Spectrum.

48K Spectrum
PRICE: £5.00
COMPANY: Widget
Address: 48 Durnham Road, London N2

This program is similar to the books which have a different picture for every letter. The program also has a lower case training mode which draws a lower case letter on the screen (pretty big), then draws the shape to go with it.

I'm surprised they found room for this program in 48K!

Alphabet presents itself in a standard plastic cassette case with a folded card insert that includes the instructions for operation of the program. The tape appears to be recorded on one side. When loaded the program gives you a choice of three activities, although number one is merely an abridged version of number two.

The program aims to give children (Widgit say 'young children' - probably implying 3-6+) a familiarity with letters of the alphabet by associating them with computer drawn pictures. The first part of the program allows you to specify a number of letters to work upon and then chooses a random point in the alphabet at which it then starts to draw its pictures. It is a slight pity that an option to specify a starting point could not have been included. The second part of the program works in exactly the same way but displays pictures for the entire alphabet. For each letter, a picture is gradually drawn on a blank screen. The child must then press the correct computer key that corresponds to the first letter of the object displayed. The keypress is read directly and does not need the use of the ENTER key. Should the child press the correct key, he is rewarded with a whole verse of 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep' through the Spectrum's speaker. Can you imagine what 26 consecutive complete verses of this do to you? Should you choose the wrong key to press, the computer clears the screen and blandly re-draws the picture for you. After six wrong inputs, it was still insisting on doing so without comment or aid.

The third part of the program is rather more useful. A lower case letter is drawn on the screen (using the PLOT, DRAW and PI commands, it would appear) and the child is then required to press the key with the corresponding capital letter on it. This exercise is very worthwhile for infant children since it extends their scope of letter recognition from 26 to 52 letters. It also meets, head on, the problem encountered in programs like the Sinclair/Macmillan Learn to Read series where a child is asked to copy a lower case letter on the screen by pressing an upper case letter on the keyboard. This program makes a valid exercise of doing just that. One possible flaw, however, appears at this point. Infants are taught to form lower case letters by starting at a particular point and proceeding in a particular direction. The program, when it 'draws/writes' its lower case letters on the screen does not always follow the accepted conventions. Nevertheless, should the correct key be pressed, the matched picture is drawn on the screen as confirmation.

The selection of pictures chosen to represent the alphabet is fair, with a few exceptions. The owl is particularly good, the zip rather clever - but was that really a fish or a vest, and why do people insist upon representing trains with steam locomotives when they went out of regular service 20 years ago?

A primary headteacher was recently enthusing to me over a suite of programs that he had recently purchased for his school BBC B. The five programs in the suite had cost £125! In this light, Alphabet, at £5.25, appears to be good value, but this is only really so if no other program treats the subject better for a similar price. Furthermore, the program must be realiable in LOADing. There's nothing worse than a crash on LOADing with a class of small children looking on, laughing at your high-tec antics. I had such trouble getting this tape LOADed that had to take it back to the shop and exchange it. Even now, it does not always go in every time. If a parent donated Alphabet to our school software library, I would accept it gratefully, but I am not sure that I would purchase it out of the school fund or PTA accounts.