By referring to an ‘educational program’, we define this as an application that aids the ‘normal’ learning process, either by helping to absorb new information, or as a support for recalling information already learned. Educational programs, especially those for the youngest students, are often designed with the idea of ‘learn through play’. Such applications are most commonly being divided because of the age of the target user (and of course by the subject concerned). So programs for the youngest have to teach new abilities under the pretext of playing, whereas programs for older users (that are conscious enough to realize how knowledge is important, but remaining under h4 influence by their parents, and carrying out the constitutional duty of learning until 18 years old) don’t pass time with visual tasks, but are concerned with having to prepare a student for a mature exam, test, or other type of knowledge test, in relatively fast, and pleasant way. A separate class represents educational applications in the field of foreign language teaching (invariably the most popular is English, then German). From the simplest, that can be treated as elaborate thematic dictionaries, to the more complex, with human speaker and speech recognition systems, they all skillfully support children and youth with the difficult task of learning a foreign language.

But children become easily bored. For an educational program expected to fulfill its task, it’s important to maintain an appropriate balance between learning and playing. If the child views an application as boring, it will just put it away, paying no attention to it. Today, programs have come into existence that found the “golden mean” between learning and playing and are eagerly used by children. But some applications require an overabundance of tasks to be completed and while playing is an aspect of the learning, it becomes secondary and soon becomes yet another neglected learning tool. I believe that it would be a good idea to create an adventure game that offers various stages that would require completion before graduating to the next stage (such applications for Windows already exist). Another idea is an arcade racing game, one which would exchange knowledge from a given subject for (additional) power-up’s for our vehicle. While for older kids, perhaps some FPS in which access to a location will require the student to provide correct responses to questions in math, physics, geography, or biology. Perhaps even some easy RPG in which the development of a character will be dependent on assimilated knowledge.

The approach of students to educational programs in middle and secondary schools is changing.The tactic of “solve a problem about fractions, and you will see a beautiful animation” is no longer sufficient. Today, students are knocking at the door of the Land of the Internet more and more often, where the king, Google, and queen, Wikipedia, reign. The majority of information needed to pass tests, if it isn’t assimilated with help of textbooks and the like, can be found on the Internet. If educational programs are to compete with the Internet, they must have either a bigger cognitive value (which can be difficult, because on the Internet you can find literally everything: from mathematical theorems and dissections of frogs, to descriptions of chemical experiments and solutions of physics problems) or must be a more interactive application. As an example, let’s review the Kalzium program. It’s functionality in comparison with a paper periodic table is unrivaled. Also, there is no static subsection of Wikipedia that will be as functional as a program in which, with a few mouse movements, we can find out not only the boiling temperature of titanium (that can be found in every chemical table, or in Wikipedia), but also the fact as to how many elements will become a liquid in 1000 C, or how many elements were known in year 1885. The other examples we could look at are Celestia or KStars because no static star chart will rival their dynamism nor arouse so much interest that allows one to freely wander among the constellations.