Consumer Life Skills

Choices & Decisions is a multimedia program available for MS-DOS and Macintosh computers. It helps high school students learn the realities of financial decision making. The program includes a 12-chapter curriculum component featuring a comprehensive teacher's guide, lesson plans, and exercises through which students learn decision-making analysis and real-life personal finance skills like comparison shopping, applying for a loan, and managing checking and credit card accounts. Through the use of a computer system, videodisc player, and TV monitor, high school students make financial decisions for on-screen characters and see the final outcome of their choices—good or bad. VISA-member financial institutions are offering Choices & Decisions to educators at no charge. To order, call (800) 235-3580.

Early Childhood

New Macintosh software programs for early childhood educators are available from Intellimation's Library for the Macintosh. The programs help students develop literacy, math, and pronunciation skills; and the programs aid teachers in diagnosing students' reading abilities and creating portfolios for student assessment. Titles include:

• Interactive Storybook Series, in which children explore language concepts through written, spoken, and pictorial media.
• The Library, a HyperCard™ stack students use to share information about books they have read.
• Pip, a HyperCard™ reading skill builder.
• Big Top Math, an interactive basic math skills program.
• Everyday Shapes, an introduction to geometric shapes.
• Diagnosing Reading Abilities, a simulation of case studies to which educators apply central theories and concepts of informal reading assessment.
• Grady Profile™—Portfolio Assessment, which allows teachers to use a microphone to capture samples of students' oral reading skills and a scanner to record students' writing samples and photographs.