Interplanetary flower show

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What's the program all the nine to eleven year olds (and their teachers) are talking about? No, it's not the new Logos, excellent though they are, nor is it Elite. It's Flowers Of Crystal from 4mation Educational Resources.

It follows in the wake of the enormously successful Granny's Garden and Spacex. Flowers is an adventure program in the same mould as the previous two, but really goes far beyond both of them.

There are four parts to the package: an audio cassette recording of the story; parts 1 and 2 of the adventure, and a utility program that prints out worksheets for recording certain parts of the program. A storybook and a hefty teacher's manual are also included to help you.

The scenario is based around the people on the planet Crystal, which is doomed because of the unscrupulous exploits of Mr. Grumble and his bubble gum factory, destructive creatures called Blids and tourists!

Together they have brought the rare Crystal Flower to near extinction and without the flower the planet will no longer exist. Children playing the adventure take the role of visitors from Earth who have to find magic objects hidden by the wise Rumala. These are used to bring about the regeneration of the Crystal Flower.

The program is in two parts. In part one, the four elements must be collected to cultivate the flower: special water; a gold pot; fertiliser; and soil. These each have to be found and brought back to the control centre. When they are assembled, the children move on to part two. Here, six parts of the Flower Dream must be found and taken to a castle to be assembled into segments of the complete picture.

The program is best attempted by children working in small groups as there are considerable advantages in shared decision-making. The program demands no particular expertise from the children, except the ability to use co-ordinates on a grid, but it does call for them to evacuate information carefully, to hypothesise and to assume a flexible approach to the construction of strategies. These skills will need to be fostered by the teacher, as failure in a program of this nature will lead to frustration despite the appealing characters and the abundance of first-class, Mode 7 graphics.

At times children find the second part baffling and success depends a great deal on tenacity and learning from mistakes. The worksheets are certainly a great help here and all credit must go to 4mation for including a utility program to print out copies.

Flowers Of Crystal can form the basis of a substantial and lengthy project with an immense range of possibilities for extension: conservation/pollution, co-ordinates, probability, writing and creative work. Perhaps more importantly, it encourages co-operation, discussion and thinking about each other's ideas. Without a doubt, Flowers Of Crystal is an outstanding piece of software with enormous potential.

Chris Drage