Early Start Software

[dhicks]

Seeing this thread about some-are-good, some-are-bad support from companies:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/behind-red-door/73751-software-hardware-companies-support.html

 

Reminded me about Early Start Software...

 

Early Start Languages for young beginners: Primary French, Spanish & German

 

...who fit in to the some-are-good catagory. A teacher purchased one of their DVDs, then wanted it "installed on the network". I contacted the company to ask them if it was okay to maybe rip the DVD footage and chop the content up into lesson-specific clips for copying to a network drive, they replied and said don't trouble yourself, we've already done that - and we'll send you the network-installable CDs for free. The free CDs duly turned up and actually contained proper, network-installable MSI files contained in a password-protected ZIP file that just needed a password printed on the inside of the CD case cover to unlock - one of the least obtrusive security systems I've seen in a while.

 

I have no idea how good the educational content itself is, but if it matches the support quality it can't be too far off. I still think something like Espresso (local server that magically updates with new content) or proper VLE-compatible content packs are better, but not bad, all the same.