Prairie Explorer: The Biomes of North America

Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: Science, Reference Price: $30

PC version requires:
486+, Win 3.1/95+, 8 MB RAM, 2xCD-ROM

Mac version requires:
PowerPC or 68040+, Sys 7.1+, 8 MB RAM, 2xCD-ROM

Description:

Start with a panoramic view of the North American prairie of 200 years ago and listen to the sounds of its animal life. Use the arrows at left and right to travel through grasslands and waterways (four to six screenfulls in total), and use the season buttons to see what happens to the same regions and their wildlife through spring, summer, fall and winter. Use the Day/Night button to switch between daytime and night-time views. Click on an individual animal to see an animation and to hear its unique sound.

Use the magnifier tool to zoom in and observe more distant animals in action. There are digging tools to get inside trees, under the ground or under water and see what lives there. The scales bring up interesting facts like distances that birds migrate or the number of eggs they lay. The Explorer's Notebook is full of pictures and observations, such as how the Bobolink got its name - just apply the book tool to an animal or plant to find out about it, or flip through the notebook to see what is there.

There are 5 different engaging activities for experimentation. Prairie Dog Town gives a personal experience of how precarious it is to be a prairie dog. Guide a little fellow through a maze of holes back to his own burrow. In the process you discover that jackrabbits and pocket gophers present no risk to him, but he has to avoid ferrets, rattlesnakes, badgers, foxes and hawks.

Animal Vision starts with a short tutorial and then lets you see through the eyes of a wolf, a snake and a bee and to try out a bat's echolocation. 'See' as the animal and identify specific creatures on the prairie. Then get more details on the animal's vision and switch back and forth between its view and a human's. It's hard to see as a bee, but the bat's echolocation is fascinating.

Food Web is another wonderful, discoverable activity, which teaches how to make and test hypotheses. First identify plants and animals in one of 4 different scenes, and then draw lines between them to show who eats who (or what). Each scene has 3 different experiments. These remove one element and then ask what will happen. After forming a hypothesis, you get to see the changes over time in the biome.

In Animal Adaptations, the objective is to classify prairie animals according to different characteristics, such as whether they are cold-blooded or if they migrate. You are then led through the process of building overlapping Venn diagrams, putting the different animals in the proper circles. Finally Prairie Restoration is all about re-introducing plant and animal life at the proper times and in the right order after a tornado destroys a prairie biome. This is a challenge!

Features:

• Multiple users
• Over 100 plants & animals
• 5 life science activities
• Printable Notebook pages
• Printable awards
• Student management options
• 30 page User Manual
• Includes other Great Wave demos

Technical Aspects:

Much of the title's information is text and pictures, so that this program would be suitable for someone with auditory difficulty - though the animal sounds would be missed. Switching between scenes was sometimes slow.

Report and Conclusions:

This is a title that a range of ages can appreciate. It is intended for grades 3 to 8, but I found it fascinating myself. I especially liked its discoverable approach. Though I found the biomes of interest, I believe the real value of the title is not in the details of prairie plant and animal life, but in the underlying science skills that it teaches. These include differences in animal vision; food chains and biome dependencies; classification, logic and Venn diagrams; and the scientific process itself, that is how to make and test hypotheses.

This is an impressive program for stimulating or reinforcing an interest in life sciences in children.