The Eyewitness History of the World, version 2.0, is another excellent resource from the DK Publishing Company. Once loaded, the user is transported to a 3‐D museum by a metallic spherical guide. A desk is placed in front of the user where the modern world is accessed via ten card drawers arranged in chronological order, from up to 500 bc, to after 1945. On the left side of the desk is access to a Who’s Who of history and country histories, whereas the right side of the desk has a quiz master and a history quest. On the left wall are icons for options and help, and the right wall has a Backtracker and an A‐Z index.
The objects residing on the desk change according to what time period is being accessed. Whenever the user chooses one of the card drawers (time periods), the lights in the room go out, a 3‐D globe on the desk becomes encased in metal, and then the lights go back on with the globe opening up and new objects appearing on the desk. The 3‐D globe is the main access point for this product. Clicking it accesses a kind of keyboard;and the globe turns into a two‐dimensional map which the user accesses by sliding a spy‐glass over the surface to various points. In this way, when the user picks a time period, the map changes to major historical sections of interest which are accessed by the spy‐glass. For each time period, there are four books that the user can reference: innovations, documents, culture and everyday life.
The Quiz Master is a machine which tests on people, places, and events in varying degrees determined by the user. The History Quest is a riddle game which uses crystals and clues contained therein to challenge the user’s knowledge. I found that the History Quest needs to have more instructions, as I was never able to find out how to answer the riddles and progress to the next section.
Eyewitness History of the World 2.0 loads easily and is available for Windows 95 only. The price is reasonable; and the quality is superb. I highly recommend this product as an exploration CD for children in primary grades and as a teaching tool for teens in the secondary grades.
