32. Edukat Junior Math Series
Do you struggle with your multiplication tables?
Do you believe that an "operand" is someone who works for the phone company?
Do you think that a "quadrilateral" is one of those muscles in your back that you sprain whenever your wife takes you out dancing?
Fear not! Your days of being "arithme-thick" are finally at their end. all thanks to the Edukat Junior Math series for the Commodore 64.
In case you actually are somewhat of an oaf and haven't yet figured it out, the Edukat series was intended to educate its users on the finer points of K-12 math skills. Commodore advertising of the time describes it as a "special concept in child education created by professional educators in Canada" (I wonder if Jim Butterfield counts as one of those), created by the eponymously named Edukat Software, registered out of Mississauga, Ontario, which also happened to be the home of Commodore's Canadian headquarters.
While not straying from math topics, the Edukat range was still fairly broad: I understand that it's broken down into two different skill levels (primary and junior), with a variety of single-topic disks covering such ground as geometry, decimals, and multiplication. The disk that happened into my possession at some unknown point in the past (I actually think it just came jammed in my 1541 to protect the heads) is specifically on the subject of graphing, so that's what what we'll be looking at for this review.
Edukat is exactly what an educator would want it to be: simple, pleasant to look at, and easy to use. You get some very basic graphics and rudimentary animation, and instructions are spelled out succinctly and always readily available to view if you need them. It's unfortunate as I feel a little bit of in-game music may have further spruced up the presentation, but we're instead limited to basic sound effects (perhaps as to not cause a disturbance in a classroom setting when you have a group of children with their own C64s using the software simultaneously).
The disk is divided into three sections or sub-topics, with an energetic frog named Cart (you know, like Cartesian coordinates?) serving as my guide to help me comprehend the finer points of a two-dimensional plane. Each section consists of a instructions, a lesson, and a set of practice questions to reinforce the lesson. To its credit, the game supports both keyboard and joystick functionality, allowing players to get away from the cumbersome arrow-key layout of the C64 keyboard. This is an especially welcome feature for this market as I could see the the need to shift-cursor your way around the screen frustrating your average kid pretty quickly.
Cordial frog tutors aside, Edukat isn't without its drawbacks. The questionable depth of material covered on a single disk is worth mentioning, as the game's three lessons can be blown through in an hour or two even without prior knowledge or graphing skills. However, your average learner may not want to return anyhow, as the flow of the program is also quite tedious - the "edutainment" genre as a whole doesn't have a reputation for necessarily being all that entertaining, and sameness unfortunately seeps in on repeat plays. Performance and load times are also sluggish, as screens take a little too long to draw (and re-draw, and re-draw again).
With all of the above in mind, we ask ourselves: is the Edukat Junior Math series still useful in the modern day as an educational tool? Is this the one killer app that delusional retro-computer dads can use get their kids hooked on Commodore and hooked on long division at the same time? No, not really. Actually, not even close. If anything, it's more a harsh reminder of the usability growing pains associated with early home computing, and with all the YouTube tutorials and Khan Academys of present times, I'd probably be ringing up my old friend Barbara at Child Protective Services if my parents tried to foist this piece of work upon me in 2024. Still, sometimes it's just neat to dig into that old box of floppies and take a pensive look back to edutainment's primitive-yet-endearing point of origin (a.k.a. point 0, 0 on a two-dimensional plane).
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