Once upon a time there was a microcomputer. It found its way into many schools and was treated with due reverence by all who saw it. The new Age of Technology had come, they said, and schools would never be the same again. But then came a problem...

At that time, there was precious little software about. Teachers and parents seized absolutely anything that would feed these hungry machines, while breathing a sigh of relief that their children were taking advantage of the learning facilities these wondrous machines offered. Not surprisingly, hundreds of software houses appeared overnight. There was gold in them thar micros... all it needed was a dozen adding-up sums, some bangs and pretty flashes, and a label stating it was an educational computer program.

Surprise surprise though. The captive audience was quickly bored rigid, and teacher realised that if she was going to sink to the level of dishing out pages and pages of tedious sums, she might just as well do it on paper instead of a TV screen. Which brings me to this suite of programs.

I'm sure the people at Tuxsoft are genuinely sincere about this mixture of 'educational material', and I wish I could say I liked it. I'm told the programs have been 'developed in conjunction with their use by youngsters over a period of time', and this may well be so, but the children in my own school found them extremely tedious and very similar to the drillskill material that flooded the market three years ago. There are six different items, with various tasks based on mathematical skills, the aim being to offer practice since there is no concept teaching here. There is a simple temperature test, a tables tester, a tables square and so on, with a selected option being chosen from a menu screen. There are several 'games' involved, though these prove pretty routine to a Microchip Kid, and don't sustain much interest.

The graphics are basic. Norman the Number Man, for example, is a badly drawn 'wire figure' who jerks across a number line. A question appears: 'Norman starts at 6. He moves +10 places. What number will he move to?' So what age group is this aimed at, my teachers asked. Young infants perhaps? A simple enough number question... but with the concept of minus numbers? Not infants after all...

'Norman' is reminiscent of those educational listings we used to type in from magazines in the primitive days. It took all night... and then the children turned their noses up as soon as they were run.

I really think Tuxsoft ought to take a hard look at the current educational market, and have another think about what to offer it. One of my teachers, for example, is currently doing a Viking project with her class, initiated from a computer program. The children have learned a massive amount; they have painted, crafted, explored, written and calculated... all these activities having stemmed from the program.

This is the way educational computing is moving, but if the aim is to provide simple yet valuable 'four rules' experience, there are many programs around from people like ASK and Mirrorsoft which offer much better value. Sorry, Tuxsoft, this won't do.