Zane Publishing Educational Software Now Available Online
If you were a teacher, student, homeschool parent or child at any time between 1995 and 2000 you may well recognise the name Zane Publishing, and this would be because Zane Publishing quickly became an established Brand in the K-12 education market during that time as one of the largest educational software publishers in America.
Unlike many of the educational software publishers at that time they chose not to focus their efforts simply on the core curriculum of Math, Reading and Writing. Instead they developed more than 260 educational CD-ROM titles specifically to teach a comprehensive range of K-12 curriculum subjects that also included Art, Music, History, Literature, Geography, Science, Biology, Health and Sex Education, Social Sciences, Library Skills and Religious Studies.
Not only did they produce material developed specifically to teach the K12 curriculum, they also developed a resource of over 23,000 multiple-choice questions to provide testing for each of those 260 curriculm topics – currently the largest testing and assessment resource still available – with every correct or incorrect answer being explained so as to ensure that the learning process continued.
The primary concept behined Zane Publishing’s educational software was to ensure that each child was able to study at their own speed thereby enabling each child to achieve their greatest potential. But the academic importance of this educational software was highlighted by the fact that every single visual presentation was subtitled – otherwise known as closed captions – which ensured that each child had the ability to watch, listen to, or read each presentation. Not only did this mean that the educational material provided for the widest range of Learning Styles – as subsequent research has successfully shown – the availability of subtitles enabled each student to improve their reading and literacy skills as they studied each curriculum topic.
But this article is not intended to be a history lesson. The demand for Zane Publishing’s educational software continues to this day, and we receive a steady stream of enquiries wanting to know where upgraded versions of these educational software titles can be purchased that will run on the latest version of the Windows and Apple Mac operating systems.
But Zane Publishing was sold in 2000 and the new owners quickly identified the potential problems caused by the constant changes to those operating systems. The solution was to deliver all of that valuable content online. Now after 4 years preparation work, all of that educational material is now available online here at Zane Education.
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