Software can facilitate collaboration. Programs that take children on an adventure create an excellent opportunity for diverse groups to work together. Challenging puzzles, with a Wild West theme, also foster collaboration. For example, to discover the rustlers' identities and locate the hogfish, Freddi and Luther have to find a hat, belt, and other rustler attire scattered around the ocean floor. Keeping track of characters and items is tricky, but children will quickly discover that when solving problems like these, two heads can be better than one.
Software can aid communication.
Affordable color printers and a new generation of creativity software give both children and teachers more tools for making contact with others. This very simple, fun, and affordable card-making activity makes it easy for young children to create and then print out simple cards for birthdays or major holidays. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then consider the value of 150,000 pictures on these 10 Printmaster Platinum CD-ROMs. The library of images, which can be used in a variety of electronic formats, such as e-mail, is also useful for creating Web pages. Software can help children feel good about achievements.