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Humanities Software Evaluation

Encarta

Copyright Date

1994

Publisher

Description

Includes 29-volume Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, thousands of photos, animations, illustrations, music, speech, maps and charts. You can cut and paste to a word proc. doc. The Research Wizard gathers all available information on a topic.

Disciplines

All

Type of Program

x Single            |     x Mac
  One of a Series   |     x IBM

Suitable for:

Individual Instruction, Large Groups, Pairs, Small Groups

Vendor

CD-ROM Warehouse

Cost

$89.00

Instructional Characteristics

Instructional Techniques

x Game
  Tutorial
  Simulation
x Informational
  Problem Solving

Documentation Available (Y=yes, N=No, NA= Not Applicable)

N  Student worksheets/Supplentary Material required
Y  Student worksheets/Supplentary Material provided
Y  Reference Manuals Required

Quality 1 (low) to 5 (high)

5  Content Characteristics
5  Instructional Characteristics
5  Technical Characteristics

Recommendations

I highly recommend this program

Comments

This interactive encyclopedia has unlimited possibilities. For example, the information on Jazz includes textual explanations of all of the styles of jazz, pictures of jazz musicians, musical examples with the score provided, and a QuickTime video of Louis Armstrong. I could recommend this section for use in integrated humanities classes studying jazz. The musical examples are long enough without being too long; they are representative of the various styles; and the quality is excellent. The same can be said of the coverage of the history of art. Pictures of some artists are included along with full screen slides of representative art works. The textual explanations cover the main points without being too technical. A teacher could use portions with an entire class using a projection system, or individuals or small groups could search topics with the Research Wizard. The program even has a game-like trivial pursuit that can be played by individuals or pairs. Players have the option of reading articles about questions they answered incorrectly.