FlexiTree

Educational programs for use in schools are becoming ever more diversified and whimsical to suit the imaginations of pupils, while some still stick to a more practical tone to promote intellectual advancement. FlexiTree enables you to create and use a branching database that can include pictures, allows you to see a diagram of the whole tree and includes a spelling checker.

Once you've finished installing the app, the first thing you are required to do is create a new (and first, for that matter) tree. It uses technology purposefully to create, organize, store, manipulate and retrieve digital content, while also collecting, analyzing, evaluating and presenting data and information. All this is achieved through the creation of branching databases, which themselves are a way of classifying a group of objects, which is one of the first things your children should learn.

After typing the title of the tree, and giving it an appropriate description, you are asked to type in a list of objects which can be continuously be edited to suit you and your pupil's needs. You can then give a comment about each object, and link a picture file and/or a sound file (wav and mp3) to it, which help with word-to-image association. Once this is complete, the program leads you through typing in a series of yes/no questions which will distinguish each of the objects in your list.

As your pupils press the right associations, they will be prompted to go further down the tree or be advised to go back in case they made a mistake.  Using proper sounds, such as those usually associated with error messages for wrong answers will also help your pupils with learning faster.

While not the most whimsical or colorful software out there, it is clear that the one aspect the developers had in mind was teaching efficiency. More so, adding the proper pictures, text, and sounds can pretty much alleviate these cons.