The Kid's Encyclopedia adds fun to learning

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): We all know that the wheel is undoubtedly one the greatest human inventions. But, who invented it?

It was only after I explored Random House Kid's Encyclopedia that I became aware that the wheel was most likely an invention of the ancient people who lived in Mesopotamia, and it was probably invented there about 5,500 years ago.

Come to think of it, weren't these people -- who lived in the plain between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that is part of present-day Iraq -- true geniuses and extremely resourceful inventors?

A report in BBC News Online two weeks ago even said that, in addition to inventing beer and bread, they also discovered the method of creating artificial rocks that were needed to grow certain crops, including grains, in the fertile plain where they lived.

The Mesopotamian civilization aside, this two-CD encyclopedia is also a step forward in combining fun and learning for children of all ages. It is published by Knowledge Adventure (KA), one of the leading publishers of multimedia education materials for children.

However, it is definitely not a complete source of information It doesn't have anything on the city of Jakarta, one of the world's large and most notorious cities, but it has quite a decent entry on Myanmar, though.

All the information in this encyclopedia is presented in a very interesting style. It mostly has the right level of detail; I think more detail might simply scare children away.

The encyclopedia comes in two discs because it is jammed packed with multimedia files. KA calls one of the CDs the "Reference" and the other the "Games" CD. When it is time to insert the other CD, a message will pop up on the screen. Unfortunately -- and this is the first glitch that I encountered -- there is no Cancel button for our children to click in case they change their mind or they're too lazy to swap the CDs.

The version that I used did not support multiple CD-ROM drives, so even though I had a CD changer made by NEC, I still had to swap the discs. As DVD-ROMs become more common, we won't have this kind problem any more. A DVD-ROM can easily hold the contents of a couple of standard CD-ROMs, so a DVD version of this encyclopedia can come in a single disc and we will no longer have to swap CDs in the middle of our browsing.

Every single entry in the encyclopedia, called the Fact-ory, has an accompanying audio file. While the text scrolls down the screen, the children will be able to hear it read for them. They can choose to silence the voice, of course, and the narrators won't protest.

However, KA has chosen people with really nice voices to be the narrators. The quality of the audio recording is really excellent. In fact, the audio feature of this encyclopedia can also be used as an excellent practice or test material in a listening comprehension class.

Another flaw that I've found in the encyclopedia is the absence of a search tool. If I wanted to learn what a combustion engine is, for example, the software has no shortcut that will allow me just to type in the phrase and sit back. I would have to hunt for the entry by clicking on the E button that you can see in the picture of the screen, and then scroll down the list until I arrived at the word engine.

And, while the explanation of the various types of engines is quite interesting, there is no detailed explanation on how an internal combustion actually works. But, then again, this encyclopedia is not meant for an adult, it's for our children who want to find out more about something their teacher might have discussed in class.

Some of the games are interesting even for adults. My favorite is Letter Rip, a Wheel of Fortune-like game by which we can test our vocabulary, even though it doesn't feature Vanna White. In this game we have to guess what the required word should be without using any clues, not even knowing the category of the word.

Another interesting game is the Zoomscape. This is interesting particularly because it demonstrates how a Walk-through works on a computer. Once inside the Zoomscape, our task is to hunt for certain categories of objects or people. Then we are placed inside a 3-dimensional maze.

If we move the mouse up, we walk forward in the 3-D space. Move the mouse to the left, and we'll see the west wall of the room or corridor we are in. Bump on a door, and it will open and let us enter another room in the maze. We keep doing this until we get to the room where the objects or the pictures of the people hang. The 3-D rendering works smoothly on my test PC, a 233 MHz AMD K6-based Presario.

Other games are more for children, but they always have good information values. For example, in the Match-o-rama players will be asked to match the box containing the text "He discovered the Theory of Relativity" with a box containing the picture of Albert Einstein. After a while, the children will automatically associate the person and the thing that made him famous.

I also found Brain Blazer a very useful part of the encyclopedia. It's not a game, it just shows a video screen in which the four hosts will appear in turns saying "Did you know that..." Each time there will be an interesting piece of information for our children to remember.

The screens are very colorful and rich. Children can choose among the four young but smart hosts that will accompany them as they explore the encyclopedia.

This encyclopedia, which was published in 1996 at US$29.95, is no longer on the list of products offered on the Web site of Knowledge Adventure, nor can it be found on Random House's site. I'm afraid this means that it is no longer available from the publisher. However, it might still be available in software stores. If you happen to find a copy of it, you should grab it for your children. It contains a lot of informative fun. And that's the best way to expand one's knowledge, isn't it?