Kahootz review

Verdict:

Review Date: 23 Jul 2004

Price when reviewed: for single home licence; from £70 for single school licence

Reviewed By: Sue Gee

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The title doesn't tell you what to expect from this CD-ROM, but this is software you'll need to experience to understand properly.

It is a cross-curricular 3D multimedia program for children aged seven to 15 that encourages creativity and exploration.

Kahootz gives pupils access to a virtual 3D world where they can write stories, develop ideas, simulate experiments, construct inventions, build animation sequences or develop games and puzzles. We'd encourage you to try the demo version from the Kahootz website to see how it does this.

You are provided with lots of tools and objects for constructing scenes and adding actors, objects, sound and animation to your world. There are also tools for navigating and exploring these environments. The software can therefore be used at a variety of levels in an educational context. Younger children can improve their language skills by talking about the supplied imaginary worlds or practise creative writing by adding text. Kahootz can also be used in the maths and science classroom to develop measurement, spatial awareness, estimation and thinking skills, and in art and design to teach the ideas of perspective and vanishing points. But its core purpose is to unleash children's imagination. It's a lot of fun and should be a hit in the home as well as the classroom.

Kahootz uses DirectX and we did experience a few problems, most of which were solved by disabling hardware acceleration. However, it provides a wealth of educational opportunities that make it easy to overlook its flaws. Recommended.

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