If you have been the recipient of one of Inclusive Technology's recent catalogues you will know they have undergone something of a transformation where product information is now provided alongside editorial, which broadly situates hardware and software in the context of a child's developmental stage. So, among others, there are products suitable for experiential learning, those that encourage early cause and effect, and those that enable the user to make choices and select preferences. The Choose and Tell series belongs to the last of these, in that it provides children with a simple story structure but allows them to decide what happens next.
To date we have had Choose and Tell: Nursery Rhymes, Choose and Tell: Legends and Choose and Tell: Fairy Tales. This latest addition to the series returns to the nursery rhyme theme with five new characters: Little Bo Peep, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, Little Jack Horner, Yankee Doodle and Pussy Cat. Once the program is loaded on your computer the child can choose which character to have an adventure with, the mode of travel, the destination, the treasure found, the monster encountered and the means of scaring the monster off.
Choices are made from two or three options at each juncture in the story - the teacher decides which - and the tale is narrated by the familiar voice of storyteller and illustrator Nick Wonham. As you would expect from Inclusive, the program can be accessed using mouse, touch screen, keyboard or one or two switches. There are also options to control scan speed and colour, for auditory scanning (where the options are read out) and a facility to help distinguish between involuntary and intended switch presses. As always the illustrations are wonderful and can be printed off for use in activities away from the computer.
Choose and Tell: More Nursery Rhymes will run on PCs with Windows 2000, XP or Vista and on Macs using OSX 10.2.8 and above. A single user licence is £49.00.
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