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March is Nutrition Month and what better way to celebrate it than by eating correctly and using the new, free, CD-ROM title, 5 A Day Adventures, with your students. 5 A Day Adventures is a joint project of The Dole Food Company and the Society for Nutrition Education and was produced by IDD, Inc. A Macintosh or Windows version is available to teachers and school librarians by writing to Dole Food Company (see address in the Products in Briefbox). Be sure to specify whether you would need a DOS or Mac version.
This is the first time to my knowledge that a commercial company and a nonprofit society have teamed up to produce a widely-distributed free CD-ROM product for students. Dole does not use this tool as an advertisement for its company or restrict this CD-ROM title to its products only.
The Leafy Green Travel Agency leads students to the Land of 5 A Day. At Adventure Theater the students see 36 animated characters in "Fruits and Vegetables Speak Up." The importance of vitamins and fiber is stressed at H.B.'s Body Shop. In Cook's Kitchen, Ray Raisin shares fruit and vegetable recipes. Sixteen salad ingredients are highlighted in the Salad Sisters song and dance at the Salad Factory. This CD-ROM title includes a jukebox that plays the eight songs which comprise the 5 A Day Top Tunes.
A support module is available to educators, and it may be printed out. Besides activity lessons, the module contains a 5 A Day Kid's Certificate and 5 A Day Logo.
This would be a fun CD-ROM tool to use in the classroom, even if it were not free. It is colorful and easy to navigate as well as educational and entertaining. This CD-ROM title is for primary and elementary school students.
RECOMMENDED NEW CD-ROMS
In my November 1992 article "MS-DOS CD-ROMs for Grades K Through 9--The Best of the Crop," I chose CD-ROM titles which could run on CD-ROM stations with 286 processors, needed only one or 2MB of RAM, and had VGA monitors. However, many new CD-ROM titles need one or more of the following components: 386 or 486 processors, 170MB+ hard drives, SVGA, 4MB to 8MB of RAM, and Windows.
MICROSOFT PRODUCTS
Given these requirements, I...