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Topics
Presents Museums of the World July 28, 2004 Let’s Go To The Museum
The Louvre set features three sections: Antiquities, Collections and Palace, and Virtual Visit, and together they offer a wonderful look at this magnificent museum. There’s a timeline to display the period you’re currently viewing or that you can use to see a different period. An index displays a list of specific works, periods, artists, or areas of interest, and clicking on words in bold gives you more information or takes you to another screen with related materials. You can also create albums for saving items for later use. The Path feature lets you see a layout of the areas on all floors of the museum and the location of the item you’re viewing. There’s a general and section index and also help sections to explain the many features included. Antiquities and Collections covers the period from 3,000 B.C. to 500 A. D. Click on any item to see a written account of that item, and in some cases there’s a narration or video about the item too. You can zoom or scale an item and see a map showing the country and city of origin of the item and also the place of its discovery. Collections and Palace covers the period from 500 A. D. to the present and includes displays of sections and individual works in the museum, both of which are vast and impressive--to put it mildly. You can select and see these works or areas by type of art, artist, period, location or "school" (French, Italian, Spanish, English, and so forth). There are bios of artists, descriptions of the periods or departments, information on the paintings, sculptures, and much more. And you can even send an email postcard of the work. This disc also includes information on the palace and the Pyramid and its architect. Virtual Visit lets you view videos and narration chosen by works, artist, department or position and also create your own tour. You can also explore the museum gallery by gallery and see a layout of all the sections of the museum and the works included there. In the tour section, you can choose from selected areas of the museum and hear a narration of highlights of that area while viewing a video. The Smithsonian disc features 15 museums of the Smithsonian, including the National Museums of Air and Space, Natural History, American History as well as the National Zoological Park, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Freer Gallery of Art, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Renwick Gallery, and more, and there are displays of selected items from each museum. Just select the museum you want to visit and click on an item on screen or use the index of available items to select the one you want to view. You can rotate, navigate, measure, hide or show parts or zoom in on items from museums, view videos on animals from the zoo, read text about what you’re viewing, and much more. Some museums offer more items to view than others, but you’ll find a good overview of many of the extensive collections of The Smithsonian Museums here as well as a history of the Smithsonian itself. The National Palace Museum of China features an extensive history of the Chinese people as portrayed by their artifacts. The program is complete with text, narrations, photos, virtual and theme tours and more. There’s an index by objects, dynasties, and more. A timeline covers 7,000 B. C. to the present, and you can use it to find information by specific periods or dates. Hover your cursor over any item and get a brief description, click, and for many of the items get a narration as to the item’s significance. Topics Presents Museums of the World offers a wealth of information and a fascinating selection of items from each of the museums featured here, all at a very reasonable price. Recommended. From Topics Entertainment, Windows 95+ with Pentium, $19.99.
Cyber Learning And Play (ages 8 - 11)
Cyberchase: Carnival Chaos (****) is an adventure-based game containing six arcade style learning activities. The game is based on the award-winning PBS-TV children’s series, Cyberchase, and the storyline finds Hacker (the bad guy) stealing the Mega Bolt, disrupting cyberspace. Jackie, Matt, Inez and bird Digit must recover the Mega Bolt to restore order. To do this they must visit the carnival and successfully complete six activities such as Bumper Pods, Whirly Birds or Skee Ball, each giving them part of the combination to the safe where the Mega Bolt is hidden. At each activity children will learn and practice different skills such as angles, strategic thinking and deductive reasoning, as well as math, logic and spatial relations. For example, in the Busting Balloons activity, children must burst adjacent balloons in the proper order (requiring strategic planning to be successful); in the Soggy Soaker, children need to estimate how much water to load into the water cannon to reach different objects that are at various distances and not run out of water; the Skee Ball Challenge requires addition and multiplication to choose which pocket to roll the ball into. Children’s progress is tracked for parents, and there’s a " Dr. Marbles" feature to explain the learning behind each game. The animations are Saturday morning cartoon style, with accompanying sound effects and music. Game control is easy, but children will have to furnish the brain power. From Brighter Child Interactive, Windows 98+ and Mac G3, OSX, 8.6-9.X, $19.99. |
