Joe Rock and Friends
© 2006 BoggleNoggin Media Inc.
A new twist on ebooks, this Canadian-made series uses rollover features and Flash programming to help children make the connection between print and associated sounds. The best part is that you can toggle between languages on the fly. This is a very strong early reading experience that could be used in either home or Pre-K early elementary school settings. There are three story choices, each with three difficulty levels. For example, in Joe and the Pirates the main pirate, Not So Scary Bob, sings about what it takes to be a pirate. Joe Rock, the featured character, visits the pirate ship to serve as ballast (he is a rock, after all). Children can choose to hear the story read, or simply roll the mouse over the text and hear each individual highlighted word. The strengths here include colorful Pixar-like 3D graphics and the catchy, cute songs which have lyrics displayed so young readers will have no trouble singing along. The only weakness we noted was the lack of an identifiable Quit icon. The DVD offers the three stories and the three songs in English, French and Spanish. There is no installation on Windows computers — everything is autoplay. A $10 DVD version is also available that presents the story in slide show format, for classroom or car trip use. We could easily see this program being used at home or in a elementary school classroom as a rich language experience. There are no assessment or tutorial features, however. The addition of the music and trilingual capability to the stories make this program an enjoyable and rich early reading experience. See also Book 2 and Book 3.
$20, Windows XP
Teaches: reading, seeing auditory text in print, language, Spanish, French
CTR Rating: 92%