They are the English and Spanish halves of an initial literacy software program for Macintosh computers. AlfaCat both develops and documents a student's attainment of alphabetic knowledge, and then helps kids to learn to read across words, with easily accesible records of correct answers and confusions. This compares favorably with other programs available to teach initial literacy, and even better with paying teachers and aides to tutor or test students on letter recognition. AlfaCat concentrates on identification rather than guessing letters. Students never have to make mistakes, because they can ask the computer to read all the sounds available to them, or ask the computer to repeat the question.
Feedback is immediate.
AlfaGato keeps students working on problem letters by returning to them soon. AlfaCat's evaluation module is a big departure from the average learning software. Since this is a test, the feedback merely acknowledges that an answer has been given. At the test's finish the sounds and numbers that have been correctly identified are printed out automatically by the computer, along with the student's name and the date. At the same time, the computer tells the student to tell the teacher that he has finished.