Category: Reviews and Awards

Know Your USA was featured in The E-Report on The Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing on Wednesday, 17 September podcast (click to listen).

The E-Report podcast is co-hosted by Tom Dziubek and Paul Herrmann. It’s tacked on to the end of the Late Day Tech Briefing on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Know Your USA 1.5 was reviewed in the September 2008 issue of Children’s Technology Review and received the Editor’s Choice Seal.

Version 1.5 [Know Your USA], released Summer of 2008, includes more content (60 photos, better maps of each state with more details, better puzzles, and a direct link to both Google Earth and the Wikipedia entry on the United States). With these new tweaks, the program provides a straightforward and effective way to practice geography facts by way of a series of lessons and timed quizzes.

About CTR:
Children’s Technology Review (CTR) is an ad-free, subscriber-supported web and print-based publication. It is designed to keep educators, parents and librarians informed on commercial interactive media products designed for children, aged birth- to 15-years. These are the products that children use for both fun and learning, either at home and/or at school. They include software, video games, interactive toys, web sites that a child might visit, and so on. From a theoretical perspective, CTR exists in the space between child development and interactive media. The Children’s Software Finder(TM), our database of more than 8,000 reviews, has become a critical step in our core subscribers’ purchasing-making decisions. It is published on the first business day of each month.

Know Your USA was reviewed in the June 2008 issue of the School Library Journal magazine. The School Library Journal has a circulation of 38,000 subscribers and over 100,000 readers. The review was based on version 1.0, so many of the new great features of version 1.5 were not covered, learn more. The entire review is below, you can read it on page 81 of the magazine too.

Know Your USA: Discover the Geography of the United States. CD-ROM. Systems: Win 98 & later. Prod. by Edware.

Gr 3 Up -Here’s a fun way to test your general knowledge of the 50 states including location, capitals, major cities, rivers, mountains, lakes, and National Parks. The “Study” section provides basic information about each state such as the area, population, nickname, and other statistics. Political and physical maps are included. The major flaw is the direct link to Wikipedia when more information is desired since there is no guarantee that all the material provided on that site is reliable. In the “Teach” section, users take a quiz and if they give an incorrect response, they are first given a hint and if their response is incorrect again they are given the correct answer. In the quiz section, the player is given the state name and must click the correct state on the map. Hints are given until the state is identified correctly. This game may be accessed for free at knowyourusa.net/quiz. The “Examine” section presents a test on all the topics covered. User progress is tracked and stored in a database to monitor future progress. An additional purchase. -Lisa Hardey, Sprague High School, Salem, OR

Interested in reselling or distributing Know Your USA in North America, get in touch.

Know Your USA is featured in the highly popular Parade Magazine across the United States in their back-to-school technology special edition.

A new school year brings both challenges and opportunities to make learning fun. As you stock up on back-to-school basics, consider some ways that technology can help your favorite students succeed.

Master the Map
Anyone who has survived the fifth grade knows you can’t graduate until you can name the capital of North Carolina. A new software application called Know Your USA ($25) helps kids learn geography through games, tutorials, timed quizzes and even a virtual jigsaw puzzle. The program also drills students on regions, states, major cities, rivers, mountains and lakes. For ages 8-14.

Parade Magazine – August 2006.

Parade is an American nationwide Sunday newspaper magazine, distributed in more than 640 newspapers in the United States. It was founded in 1941 and is owned by Advance Publications. The most widely read magazine in the U.S., Parade has a circulation of 32.5 million and a readership of nearly 60 million.

Know Your USA was awarded the highly respected Editor’s Choice for the month of July by the Children’s Technology Review magazine. We our honored to receive such an award from one of the most respected educational review magazines in the world.

Review from the July issue:
It provides a straightforward and effective way to practice geography facts by way of a series of lessons and timed quizzes. For example, in the State Capitals section, students can explore the answers by simply rolling the mouse around the screen which, it turn, pops-up the name of each state’s capitol city. In the Quickfire quiz, a capital is named, and students must select the right answer. Unfortunately, the interaction is clunky–students must click “OK” to continue to the next question, which gets repetitive.

The next step is Exam, where they must type the name of the capital. Individual student progress is stored on your hard drive, providing students sign in. There is no use limit as to the number of students, making this a viable consideration for elementary or middle school classroom use.

Other topics include regions, states, state capitals, major cities, rivers, mountains and lakes. There is also a states jigsaw puzzle. If you are looking for clean, affordable geography practice, this is a good choice. Note that the developer’s previous titles include Know Your Ireland and Know Your Europe. A “Know Your Earth” is planned. You can download a seven-day trial version, and purchase a download key if you like the program.

Know Your USA was awarded 4.4 stars out of 5 stars.

Know Your USA – Editor’s Choice Award July 2006