Novell's Consumer Division Announces Read-A-Rama for Windows

Burgeoning Education Product Line Adds New Pre-Reading Title

ATLANTA -- April 24, 1995 -- Novell, Inc. today announced the development of a new pre-reading title for kids ages 5-7 entitled Read-A-Rama. The newest education software title from Novell's PerfectHome consumer line, Read-A-Rama is expected to begin shipping in June.

Read-A-Rama presents kids with six different colorful and fun-filled activities that help develop reading skills at an early age. Activities include Hidden Letter, Make a Scene, Blending Dragon, Blend a Word, Letter Eliminator and Letter Checker. Each of these interactive activities combine several "media" elements including voice, music, animated graphics and text.

The program encourages learning by sounding out letters and word parts and by asking kids to repeat those sounds. Read-A-Rama quizzes children on upper and lowercase letter memorization, letter sounds and names, and on combining letters and word parts to form new words. The program also lets kids have fun creating words by removing letters from other words.

"Studies have shown that before kids can begin reading, they must typically be exposed to more than 3,000 hours of pre-reading instruction.," said Dan Rask, education product marketing director, Novell Consumer Division. "Those 3,000 hours can consist of things like watching Sesame Street, playing with letter magnets on the refrigerator, or even bedtime stories from parents. With Read-A-Rama, kids will enjoy spending time with these attention-getting and intriguing activities that will quickly get them on their way to reading comprehension."

Novell has brought Read-A-Rama to market through a strategic development partnership with the Waterford Institute, a non-profit private school (for grades K-12) and an experienced on-site developer of world-class educational, multimedia software titles.

Read-A-Rama is a perfect title for kids, even if they can't read or have limited identification skills of letters and letter sounds and names. The program creates an environment that is conducive to learning through interactive, instructional audio. The audio encourages children to sound out letters and words while providing positive feedback and encouragement--a vital aspect for every young child's learning experience.

Read-A-Rama will begin shipping in June with a suggested retail price of $49.95 and will be widely available in stores on July 1. The CD-ROM requires a 486SX processor, 4MB RAM (8MB recommended), 1MB hard disk space, Windows 3.1 or higher, a double-speed CD-ROM drive, 256 color video display, mouse and MPC2 compatible sound card and speakers. For more information call (800) 451-5151.

Other award-winning home education titles from the PerfectHome product line include such titles as Read with Me, Memphis Math: Treasure of the Tombs, and Write with Me. An additional pre-reading title to ship in June was also announced today entitled Make A Story.

Novell consumer software continues to make computers more practical and computing more pervasive with a wide range of titles in the areas of personal productivity, family entertainment and home education.