WASHINGTON – There is no point in trying to convince a teenager that homework is fun.
Parents might as well try to flap their arms and fly. At least your child would get a good laugh before having to hunker down and write that paper on medieval literature. Microsoft Student 2006 may take some of the sting out of the process. The $99.99 software is a new effort by Microsoft to provide middle- and high-school students basic homework tools.
Possibly the most useful part of the content-rich program is Learning Essentials for Students. Here students can find templates and tutorials to help them break the mental logjam. There are basic templates for math, science, language arts and social studies papers. Students, of course, must fill in the content.
Microsoft Student 2006 presumes you already own either Office XP or 2003. However, I tested Microsoft Student 2006 with Open Office, a free program available at www.openoffice.org, and it worked just fine.
Tutorials are also a great feature. They clearly explain almost any type of writing assignment. There are tips on getting organized, math activities and “how-tos” on creating charts, graphs and spreadsheets.
The software includes book summaries of literature used in language arts classes. The synopses aren’t thorough enough so that kids can use them to bluff their way through a paper.
Finally, the program comes with a book of quotations, access to online math help, and a full copy of Encarta, Microsoft’s encyclopedia. At least one reviewer has complained that Microsoft Student 2006 will help middle-schoolers, but that it lacks enough content for high school students.
To that I say, duh! (My kids taught me that one.)
Microsoft Student 2006 is useful and engaging. My only real concern is that at $100 a copy, it may be unavailable to many lower-income families.
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AP-NY-08-17-05 0620EDTbottom line
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