Thinkin’ Science ZAP! Software
I wanted to veer from my list making long enough to give you a short review of a specific piece of science educational software today. This one’s an oldie (if you call 10 years old) but a goodie. It’s designed for children ages 8 to 12 years. But don’t be surprised if you enjoy it, too.
The program is called Thinkin’ Science ZAP! by Edmark. It won some prestigious awards when it was first released: 1998 ComputED EDDIE Aware–Science; 1998 Parents’ Choice Award–Parent’s Choice Foundation; and, 1998 Software Magic Award–Parenting. The science topics covered in this program–sound, light, and electricity–are timeless. So this is a highly recommended program. The only drawback my be that it’s a fairly simple interface. To me this just means that a lot of the clutter and noise of more modern games is reduced, but you might feel differently.
Your child will learn through an interactive game. The premise is that they are to be a guest director at a theater called the Wonder Dome. The shows here are a combination of light, sound, and electricity. Suddenly, the theater is zapped by lightning, and the control systems are useless. Your child’s goal becomes to learn about light, sound, and electricity so the show can go on.
The program provides a wonderful learning environment for each area. In the Electro Loft you can experiment with circuits, batteries, wires, switches, and other components to learn how they work together. 
In the Sound Wave Studio your child gets to ’see’ sound waves, play with the frequency and amplitude of hundreds of prerecorded sounds, and even record their own. In the Laser Lab, you can manipulate mirrors, lenses, barriers, mixers, splitters, and filters to make light bend, bounce, or blend. You get to create your own laser show. This is all great fun for the kids, but there’s learning going on at every level.
To accommodate different kinds of learners, each environment offers two different paths through the section. Children can explore at will (Explore Mode) or they can work in a more sequential path (Question and Answer Mode). It’s all well designed not only to teach about the specific topics in the program, but also to teach the user the basics of scientific method.
Bonus material include a Sci-clopedia of Facts and a collection of 222 topically related articles from World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia. There’s some great stuff in here. There’s also an Educator’s Guide. An added bonus is that ZAP! will run on a PC or a Mac. And Edmark has other associated programs. So if you like this one, you can feel confident that that others in the series will be good as well. Finally, because it’s a somewhat older program, you can find it for a really reasonable price. Be sure to check this one out!
