European Knowledge gives you the chance to put your knowledge of Europe to the test as you might gather from its title. The program draws a hi-res map of Europe and then sets a series of questions for you to answer.
First, one of the countries is singled out by the program and drawn in an inset in the top left-hand corner of the screen. A flashing arrow then points to its location on the main map and you are asked to identify which country it is.
Having identified the country correctly, you are set four questions on such subjects as its population, currency, language, famous people or major towns and cities. You are given a choice of answers for each question and select with a single key press the one you think is correct.
Before the test starts, you set the degree of difficulty you want to work to. This sets the time allowed to answer each of the questions. Should you fail to answer in the given time or in fact give a wrong answer you are told what the correct one is.
Forty questions are set in each session and at the end your score is given as a percentage. It is also possible to check your score at any time during the test too.
The overall presentation of this program is very good. It is very user-friendly with no glaring nasties. I tried it out on several friends including some young children who were not that familiar with computers and they found no problems and in fact thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
One point that was mentioned by a few people was that the flashing arrow that points to a country sometimes leads to a bit of confusion. I have to agree with this and think that a better method could have been adopted.
In conclusion, this is a very good program of its type but I feel that it is rather expensive for what it does. In a school where it would be used by many pupils, it is obviously worthwhile, but for home use it is rather limited as after being used once or twice it then becomes redundant.