Zane Power CD Collection

For the past few years I have watched the Zane (formerly ZCI) Power CD collection gain considerable fame in the homeschooling market. I have spent the past few weeks working through a wide cross-section of these programs. You may have seen recent articles profiling company president Paul Pilzer in "Success" magazine among others. Recently, Zane has turned over most of the marketing and sales of their product to Amway distributors. While this seemed an odd bit of news to me at first, it is apparently working for them. The company is a huge success. Their product did not originate with Amway.

The Power CD collection covers virtually every school subject taught from kindergarten through 12th grade. CD's dealing with elementary science, music appreciation, mathematics, literature, history and advanced test preparation are available at a very reasonable price. Most of the CD's can be purchased in small collections for less than $10 per CD! This makes them within the financial reach of most homeschoolers, parents and teachers. If you are trying to piece together an entire year's curriculum, or simply want to find a brush-up course on World Literature, you will find what you need in the Zane catalog. The Learning Guide Catalog lets you know exactly what is included on each CD.

Each CD contains references which will be needed by the student such as dictionaries etc. These are self contained courses which take up very little precious hard drive space. When the CD first starts up, your child will watch a multimedia presentation which will walk him through the entire course. The presentation can be played automatically, or one frame at a time. Everything in the presentation is read aloud and also printed at the bottom of the screen. The presentations are pretty good, but nothing to jump up and down about. Pictures and music accompany each screen. The elementary science programs were my least favorite as the pictures were rather dull. They looked like fancy color book prints. The younger kids are basically listening to an illustrated story which presents the lesson. Words throughout the presentation are highlighted and hyperlinked to definitions and explanations. The Art History programs are the best quality programs in my opinion. These are far more than text on a blue screen, but they are in simple workbook formats. This may not appeal to some parents. If you have a "workbook loving" child they will enjoy these programs.

Once the presentation is complete, your child will be asked a series of multiple choice questions. These are not read aloud, so your younger children will suddenly need your help. The questions are nothing more than comprehension questions, so don't expect a lot of complex higher level thinking skills here. They do make sure your child has learned the information presented, and brings him back to the area of the presentation where mistakes were made if you like.

The price of these CD's makes them very appealing to me. If you are one of those parents who buys workbooks as filler, or to just see if there are any big holes, these may be a very good option for you. As far as complete curriculum products go, these have more multimedia than most and are more interesting. The parental tracking does not tie in to all CD's, but you can track your child's progress on each. Your kids will like these, but your kids are not going to let "Zoombinis" gather dust while they return to these CD's over and over again.

Grading:

Educational value- 4
Entertainment value- 2 1/2
Use of medium- 3
Dollar value- 5
Age- 5+

System requirements- 386/33+ with Windows 3.1+, 4-8 MB RAM, VGA (SVGA recommended,) mouse and sound card recommended (highly in my book!) SRP varies and is around $10 per CD. Zane Publishing can be reached at (214)746-5555 or through their web site at http://www.zane.com