On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Leah, Nathan and Emily Bibliowicz return home from school and race straight to their parents’ room for a couple of hours of continuing education.
They speed past the cookie jar, the television and their G.I. Joes and Barbies to the lone seat at Mom and Dad’s golden oak roll-top desk.
It’s here that the winner of the race flips a switch and enters a world of thundering dinosaurs, flying saucers and exploring astronauts, courtesy of a compact disc.
These days, the Orlando youngsters aren’t alone in booting up for an educational thrill ride. Many kids are sampling computer technology thanks to the explosion of the children’s educational software market over the last two years.
Software manufacturers have flooded consumers with software in response to the cries of parents searching for more engaging ways to encourage and support their children’s interest in reading, writing and arithmetic.
There’s “a growing concern among parents about their children getting left behind, so they’re doing everything they can to help with their children’s education,” said Karen Schultz, publisher of KidSoft magazine, an educational software guide aimed at children who are computer users.
Home-education software-a category made up mostly of children’s titles-accounts for only a small slice of the overall industry pie. Total U.S. retail software sales amount to $1.6 billion. Home education accounts for $50 million of that, but industry experts predict it will emerge as the fastest-growing software market of 1993-94.
It’s not difficult to figure out why. There are about 37 million children from 4 to 12 years old in the United States, with another 4.2 million babies born in 1990, the most since 1961. All those kids potentially add up to a lot of purchases.
In the past, high price tags caused many families to shy away from personal computers. That meant a child’s only exposure to a computer was at school.
Over the past few years, however, costs have dipped, consumers’ knowledge has increased and “more manufacturers are getting into the home market,” said PC Magazine associate editor Julie Cohen, who edits After Hours, a section on educational, children’s and personal-enrichment software.
The advent of CD-ROM has fueled the push into the home as well. Industry experts say 2 million personal computers equipped with CD-ROM drives were sold in 1992; 15 million are expected to be sold by 1995.
CD-ROM paved the way for multimedia technology, which combines high-fidelity sound, animation and text and is used in entertainment and educational software. It’s what makes much of the children-oriented software appealing.
“Many of them are interactive-you do something to the screen and you get something in return,” Cohen said. “The character comes to life and it’s fun to explore. It has something to do with television. We are a television culture.”
Today’s most popular children’s software is produced by large companies such as Broderbund and the Learning Company, which funnel most of its efforts into this niche market.
But other companies, whose focus in the past has been on business-related software, have begun to tap into the market. Compton’s New Media, for example, bought this year by the Tribune Co., grabbed a big stake in the market with the release of a number of multimedia titles, including its interactive encyclopedia program on CD-ROM.
The computer industry’s assault on the household got a boost when Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software company, debuted its line of home education CD-ROM and multimedia software in early December.
The software giant unveiled its Microsoft Home brand, which includes its Encarta encyclopedia; Dinosaurs “edutainment” disc; Creative Writer, a writing and publishing program; and Fine Artist, an art and drawing program.
Microsoft officials say the company’s consumer division, which will issue about 100 titles under its Home logo in coming months, will be the company’s largest within five years.
Industry experts consider multimedia the key to mainstreaming personal-computer use, a process that has become more crucial in the past two years because businesses aren’t buying computers the way they used to.
It is now parents who are picking up the slack.
“Parents see it as a way to help support their kids’ education and as a creative and productive tool to help in children’s education,” Schultz said.
That description certainly fits the Bibliowiczes.
Virginia and her husband, Mike, bought a computer four years ago but recently bought a new IBM 486 model because the previous one could not run the new children’s software.
“They fight over the computer,” said Virginia. “From 3 o’clock to 7, which is dinner time, somebody is on the computer.”
“I’ve never used it for anything else except for the children’s education,” she said. “Our kids aren’t allowed to watch TV.”
Nathan, 7, Leah, 9, and Emily, 5, don’t seem to mind. Not when Leah can pop a Super Solvers Gizmos & Gadgets CD-ROM disc into her computer drive. She matches wits with Morty Maxwell, the Master of Mischief-and the disc’s narrator-as he challenges her to master the principles of physical science.
Magnetism, electricity, gravity and friction are demonstrated in a color display. With a couple of clicks on the computer mouse, Leah builds a fleet racing vehicle that beats old Morty at his own game.
Leah’s parents are home-education software disciples. The couple enrolled their children in Club KidSoft, a KidSoft magazine program; have purchased some 35 titles; and are considering buying a lap-top computer for the kids to fiddle with on road trips.
