Educational Software – the Key to Improving IT Skills
by: aspexsoftware
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The education our children are receiving at school includes academic subjects such as maths and history, science and literature, and also more practical subjects, like textiles, working with materials such as wood, art, food and cooking, childcare, IT and business studies.
A recent survey has found that more than three-quarters of parents think that school does not equip young people adequately to enter the jobs market. They believe that more emphasis should be given to vocational subjects.
Most children will not end up as Oxford Dons, and many kids soon discover that they possess not much gifting for the intellectual side of life. Nevertheless everyone can be good at something and the process of education should uncover what that something is. Less academically inclined kids often have other abilities, for instance a child may have an instinctive 'way' with animals or young children, in which case perhaps they may enjoy life as a stable boy or girl, or maybe working in a veterinary practise as an animal nurse or as a nursery nurse. They may have 'green' fingers' and be budding gardeners and horticulturalists. They may have real artistic ability, or an 'ear' for music in which case it makes sense to aim for a life as an artist, as a craftperson or in entertainment.
The survey by Skillfast UK revealed that the overwhelming majority of mums and dads wanted teachers to be more in touch with the business world. Business can consist of anything from selling socks to renting out apartments in Hawaii to selling educational software. Common to all businesses in the third millennium is that at the centre of the enterprise is the computer, and so the majority of businesses are dependent on good IT skills.
Schools give children the chance to acquire and improve their IT skills from an early age. Children's educational software such as Spex used at school helps kids to learn dexterity when handling a mouse, and enables them to play around with and learn to manipulate computer graphics. It also helps them to realise that price and costs must be taken into account in a project, displays a very simple spreadsheet and shows them how that can help to calculate costs. And of course, controlling costs is a matter of great importance for any business person.
Equally, educational software like the easy 3D software, tabs from Aspex demonstrates to children that computers can be excellent as design tools, and not only for designing but also actually manufacturing and making a product. Tabs enables children to design and manufacture models from 3D shapes easily and quickly eg boxes and simple models like buildings and space rockets. Children get some basic experience of how things are done these days in the commercial world.
Educational software that children can regularly play with at home and at school helps them gain confidence about their ability with computers and IT generally. Kids begin to understand the power of computers and technology to revolutionise everyday life, and computers become a normal part of the child's mental picture of the world. Kids will as a matter of course turn to the internet when they need to research something, or buy something, or look up their friends. By this time the computer has become their friend, an everyday tool rather than a stranger and a tool of last resort.
Aspex Software aims to produce relevant high quality Kids educational software products which has resulted in four genuinely content-free, open ended, cross-curricular design software packages for children; Spex, the children's educational software for designing rooms in a house, Spexworlds! which is a dream to design a house and other places, tabs easy 3D software for nets and modeling, and Shapes and Nets a program for children to investigate 2D shapes and 3D shapes.
Our educational software programs inspire children to utilise their innate imagination and ability to make a personal and unique design, perhaps a kitchen layout or a model of a rocket. Meanwhile the learning valuable new skills just happens while children are having fun.
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Aspex Software aims to produce relevant high quality Kids educational software products which has resulted in four genuinely content-free, open ended, cross-curricular design software products.
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