Poisson Rouge - Red Fish Soup - Games For Children

Poisson Rouge

This site is brilliantly designed. There seems to be endless interactive activities everywhere within the site. One of my students 'Tori' likes to explore this website all the time. She never gets bored with it and repeats things she learns from it all the time. Tori particularly likes the castle section. I had to show her the difference between the French castle and the English one so she can hear the English speaking voice and not the French one. She can mouse over the various spires of the castle and see what items she'd like to explore(she usually does them all, more than once). There's a music room with a collection of instruments that plays music when clicked on. One room has an interactive gesture model(the kind artists use to bend into poses for still life drawings. In the same room there's also a face that can be manipulated. Tori likes to change the hair, lips and eyes just to hear the female English voice that describes each feature. I highly recommend this site to teachers, parents of small children or in my case people who work with developmentally disadvantaged students.

Boardmaker v.6 for Windows

System Requirements
OS: Windows 2000 or higher. RAM: 256MB, Free Hard Drive Space: 350MB
OS: Macintosh 10.2.8 or higher. RAM: 256MB, Free Hard Drive Space: 350MB

price for Windows $329.00
price for Macintosh $329.00

Boardmaker is a graphics database program that can be used to create a variety of communication materials for the classroom. The database contains over 4,500 (PCS) or picture communication symbols.

The drawing window allows you to quickly create communication boards, device overlays, worksheets, schedules, calendars, etc. Over 100 sample boards and more than 350 blank template boards are provided to help you quickly build the boards you need. The symbols can be made in any size, printed in color or black & white, and displayed with text in a variety of languages, including Hmong.

We use this software in our classroom all the time. I work in a self-contained classroom with students with special needs. This program is perfect for those students who don't communicate well by allowing them to use pictures for help or even tell a story. Every morning we have the students gather on the blue rug for 'morning meeting' and we use a picture schedule that we designed using Boardmaker. The picture icons are blown up to a dimension of 4"x4", printed in color and then laminated. We attached velcro strips to the back of each icon so they can be moved around easily. We lay the schedule out in one long strip and have it secured to the whiteboard.

New features with Boardmaker V6 include a Symbolate Button tool that makes it fast and easy to create “sentence strip” buttons and symbol augmented stories, drag and drop capabilities to quickly import pictures onto your boards and improved Symbol Finder options.

Spelling City

SpellingCity.Com

Spelling City is an online spelling program with spelling games, spelling reviews, and spelling quizzes.

Students can enter their weekly spelling lists and quiz themselves or play a game using the words they've entered.

Teachers and adults can register and the create word lists to test children. After registering and creating a list you can save the list for future reference. There's also thousands of sample spelling lists to choose from.

The Incredible Machine & Oregon Trail II

The Incredible Machine V 3.0 (1995)
published by Sierra Entertainment

This looked interesting to me but I couldn't get it to run properly. I tried changing the computer's screen resolution but that didn't solve the problem. I tried using a different computer but had the same problem. I looked for solutions on the internet but had difficulties finding any useful information. I finally threw in the towel, put the software back in the cabinet and chose something else.

Oregon Trail II by MECC (1996)

This is another game that I have heard a lot about but never played until last Thursday's class. I did not have to install this game because it was already installed on the computer I was using in the lab. The first thing that struck me were the detailed graphics. This surprised me since the game was designed back in '96. I was able to talk with other settlers along the way and ask their advice. There were plenty of towns with trading posts to resupply my party. I didn't get
too far into the game but got the gist early on. I read somewhere that this version has several random events that may or may not occur during game play. I was hoping
for a Buffalo stampede but it didn't happen this time.

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

Title: Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

Developer/Publisher: Brøderbund Software (1998)

I know how popular this game was and this version was one of the latest. They released this version after 5 seasons of the show (by the same name)on PBS.

I played a couple of times but could not figure out how to obtain a warrant. I followed all the clues but could not seem to catch up with Carmen. The game still holds up as a fun and challenging educational game. The game is chock full of extras like Quick Time videos and the ACME Good Guides. The characters are all interesting and unique. Each location has an elaborately painted backdrop that can be scrolled around a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

I have a feeling I'll need to call upon the ACME Good Guides in order to get my warrant in order. I can take tours with the Good Guides and travel to countries without the inconvenience of having to track a crook by myself using "explorer mode".
I will try this tonight.

Primary Ed. Suite

GCompris freeware GPL License

Windows version has only 21 out of the 109 activities
GCompris

GNU/Linux version does not have this restriction.

GCompris is being developed to free schools from the monopolistic software vendors.

GCompris V8.3.5 is a collection of educational games that provides different activities for children aged 2 and up.

GCompris activity categories:
>Discover the computer -- play with computer peripherals

1)Keyboard-manipulation/Discover the keyboard -- children type falling letters before they reach the ground. goal Letter association between the screen and keyboard.

2)Mouse-manipulation activities/Various mouse-based activities (clicking, moving)--
a] Click On Me -- Left-click with the mouse on all the swimming fish before they leave the fishtank. goal Motor coordination: moving and clicking the mouse.
b] Move the mouse -- Move the mouse to erase the area to discover the background.goal Motor-coordination
c] Click the mouse -- Click the mouse to erase the area to discover the background.
d] Double click the mouse -- Double-click the mouse to erase the area to discover the background.

>Go to discovery activities -- color, sound, memory...

>Experimental activities -- two activities based on physical movement

>Amusement activities -- various fun activities

>Math
>Puzzles
>Reading
>Strategy games -- Oware (a variant of mancala)

RoboMind 2.2.1 -- Open Source Version

I downloaded this program the other night and played around with it for about an hour. You can operate the robot remotely to get an idea of how he moves around before actually writing a program script. Robo can move forward and back and turn around 360 degrees in either direction. Robo can also paint in white or black -- he trails the paint from behind him as he moves along in a forward direction. He can write stuff like the word ROBOT. There are example scripts that you can open and use before writing your own. Example two: find the white spot -- looks like this:

repeat(){
if(leftIsWhite()){
# There's a white spot on your left
left()
forward(1)
end
}
else{
# There's no white spot yet
forward(1)
}
}

"ROBO is a new and very simple educational programming language that will familiarize you with the basics of computer science. You will also be introduced into popular programming techniques, and you will gain an insight into areas such as robotics and artificial intelligence. These skills will be gained by creating programs for a robot.

RoboMind is meant to be a first introduction to automation and programming without prerequisites. Because many different exercises can be made, the difficulty level can be tailored to the audience. In primary education pupils can get acquainted to writing commands to navigate the robot through its environment, on high school programming structures get more attention and universities focus on the theoretical aspects of automation theory like Turing machines."

The version that I downloaded is the open source version and it is free. It was a very small download only taking up 1.62 KB of space.
ROBOMIND