Educational Shareware for DOS
Help yourself
to my shareware
These programs are all under 64K and will work on a minimal DOS system (8088).
A few prefer to find CGA or a Hercules card, but none make system demands beyond
that. Your comments on these programs are always welcome at: don@shorock.com.
Downloading instructions
My Internet provider says they're working on a way to provide for
anonymous FTP transfer from a second (isolated) server. For that reason, I was
told that I couldn't put up .zip files of my shareware for you to download
yet. When it comes to computers, the word
couldn't isn't in my son's vocabulary, so he suggested
a way to provide them to you. The technical term for such a procedure is
kludge. (That means that it's not pretty, but it works.)
When you click on the name of one of these files, your Netscape will try to
open it as a hypertext file ... and fail. Netscape won't know what to do with the
file and will ask you what to do. One of the choices will be Save the file. Since that's what you wanted to do in
the first place, click that button. It will then ask you where on your drive to
put the file. (That's up to you.) You can then click OK
and the download will occur. Then you can PKUNZIP the file and use it.
This program could be useful to advanced students preparing for the National
Geographic Society's Geography Bee. It contains information on what
country touches what other countries (or bodies of water), as well as information
about what country exports what products. You can look up
information or drill yourself with a quiz. Adult trivia buffs
will probably enjoy playing with this one. It does have a reward sequence, using
random classical music themes as rewards.
Another geography program, this one contains information about what states
produce what (agriculturally speaking). You can look up
information or use the quiz. There are no reward sequences.
This is my idea of the ultimate generic drill program. If you need to memorize
something and can picture the information as a two-column chart (or a set of flash cards),
you can drill yourself electronically. You can build up to 90 such files with up to 200
pairs of information in each file. You can perform any editing function on the files you
make. A few starter files come with the program. The questions generated are in
multiple-choice format and the program checks for exact duplications when
making the choices, giving the program greater versatility than other drill programs
I've seen.
Integrated learning is a buzzword in educational circles today. It wasn't
when the original of this one was written on the TI-99/4a about ten years ago. This
program is primary a multiplication drill, although it is
designed to improve vocabulary by using the appropriate
words to classify animals. It even works on developing reading
skills by using no numerals when posing sentence problems. (The user may use words or numerals in answering
the questions.) The program is level-seeking: if the student is
doing well, the questions get harder; if the student is missing too many, the
questions get easier.
This tight little program drills one of the most basic algebra
skills: factoring. This program is also level-seeking.
This program is designed to help you make career choices. It was co-authored with my son, Tom Shorock. I had developed the scoring algorithm when I wrote this for the TI-99/4a and later for the Apple II,, but he did the bulk of the coding for this version (when he was 14 years old) as an exercise while he was teaching himself how to program in C.
Kansas Trucker
This is a text-based geography game
based on the map of the state of Kansas. Each copy is slightly customized, so,
if you want a copy, you'll need to contact me at: don@shorock.com.
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