Published by The Voyager Company. This multimedia history program provides users with a new avenue for learning and exploring history. The product focuses on American history from 1876 to 1917. It incorporates text, music, photos, movies, and spoken dialogue from interviews to comedy sketches. $99.95. ISBN 1559402954. Macintosh.
A table of contents is presented first, with many chapters to choose from. Once the user has picked a chapter, the text appears. Often the text is accompanied by gray and white images, which when clicked on bring up beautiful images. Within each chapter the user can read the text or go on different "excursions" related to a topic on the page. These excursions provide text from actual documents, narrated text, movies, slide shows, advertisements, music of the era, sketches, speeches, and many other possibilities.
In a chapter on employment, there was an excursion that provided more information about the "Triangle Company Fire." It included clippings from newspapers of the time, photographs, and text information. Another excursion was a former black slave recounting what life was like working as an indentured servant.
Special reference features are also included. One such feature is a very detailed timeline. It is divided by different topics from culture, society , politics, deaths/births, abroad, etc., and by each individual year from 1876 to 1914. The user may choose a topic and a year to find relevant information.
World and U.S. maps are provided, although they do not offer much
detail. Appendices include the the text of both The Declaration of
Independence and The Constitution. [Top of Page]
Special Features
I enjoyed using the Resource Index. This index is divided into
different mediums such as movies, puzzles, audio, graphs, etcetera.
This provides access to all the different kinds of media, without
going through all the chapters and excursions. You can click on
movies and watch all the movies contained in the program; or you
can click on games and play some of the games in the excursions.
These multimedia items are what make this a great program, and
provide a fun way to browse through the product and excite
one's curiosity. [Top of Page]
Ease of Use & Audience
Once I got used to the navigation system of this program, it was
simple to follow. I had to work with it a while before I could move
around effortlessly. In the excursions, you click on the page
arrows, to turn pages, but in the chapters you have to use the
arrow keys. To get back to the table of contents, you drag down
at the title heading for each page. All in all, it is an easy
program to navigate through, once you've got the arrangement
figured out.
This would be a valuable source for highschool students and adults interested in particular aspects of life in this time period. It is a excellent reference tool. Students needing more information about certain topics, people, ideas of this time in history can just use the search capabilities to find this information. It is a much better way to experience history.
Just a simple warning though: this product contains an immense
amount of text and this may make it unappealing for students just
wanting a product to browse through. [Top of Page]
Installation Details
System Requirements: any color Macintosh with a
13" monitor; System 7; 5,000K of available RAM, CD-ROM drive
(double speed recommended). The program will run with the
suggested minimal requirements, but not well. I used a Power
Macintosh with no problems.
Installation: installation was easy with the help
of the three pages of instructions in the manual. Several
different items have to be loaded on the hard drive before
it can be used. These include QuickTime , Sound Manager, and
allocating 5,000K of memory to HyperCard. [Top of Page]
Other Reviews
The Voyager Company
See: Gonzalez, Juan.
"Apple's Big Byte out of History."
The New York Daily News.
Bickford, Carolyn. "History: The Best 50 CD-ROMs." MacUser. October, 1994. Page 78.
"The disc supplies rich historical detail and brings
alive the era's popular culture..."
Forrester, James. "Who Built America?: From Centennial
Celebration of 1876 to the Great War of 1914." CD-ROM
Professional. September/October 1994. Page 90.