Today's Wisdom

Friday, October 8, 2010

Review of Digital Frog Field Trip Series


I received The Digital Field Trip DVD series from Digital Frog International as a member of TOS Homeschool Crew to review.  I had never heard of the company before at all.  They are located in Ontario, Canada and offer lots of different products and services.  I was impressed with the company right away even before receiving anything from them.  The vendor actually drove the copies of the DVDs coming to the US across the border so that my fellow US crewmates would not have any problems receiving our product.  I thought that was awesome!

The DVD I reviewed offers three virtual field trips for you to explore.  The three field trips included are The Wetlands, The Rainforest, and The Desert.  We were discussing the 7 types of biomes in our classical conversations group so this came at a wonderful time! 

This DVD is loaded with information and scientific facts about these areas.  We are still going through the DVD and haven't completely finished one field trip yet!  Honestly, if you went through all the information and did all the workbook pages it would take you years to finish this!  We decided to browse each field trip and then went back to our favorite for a more in depth study.  The picture quality is amazing!  It really did look like you were right there in the desert, wetlands, and rainforest!

Also included with each digital field trip are workbook pages that can be printed from the DVD, interactive maps, definitions and pronunciations of scientific vocabulary words, ability to bookmark your favorite parts, online updates, games, and so much more.

Since there is so much information on the DVD, I'm going to give an overview of each one separately. 

The Desert

You will be transported to five of North America's deserts while never even leaving your chair!  The deserts you will visit are the Sonoran Desert, the Painted Desert, Cattail Falls Oasis in Big Bend National Park, Black Rock Desert, and Death Valley. You will explore many aspects of desert life including desert types, desert mechanisms, and the impacts of deserts.
You can view a sample of the Desert workbook here.

The Rainforest
With this field trip you will explore the Blue Creek Rainforest Reserve in Belize, Central America.  You will surround yourself with the sounds of a tropical rainforest as you learn more about it, the plants and animals found there and the mechanisms and processes that keep them alive and vital.
You can view a sample of the Rainforest workbook here.


The Wetlands
The wetlands include five modules for you to explore.  The five modules are the Field Trip, Study of a Bog, Wetlands Types, Mechanisms of a Wetland, and Endangered Wetlands.
You can view a sample of the Wetlands workbook here.


The following system requirements are required for each DVD:

Windows: Pentium II with Windows 2000, XP or Vista (Pentium III recommended) with a DVD drive, 32 MB of RAM (64 or more recommended) and 75 MB of hard drive space for QuickTime.


Macintosh: G3 300 with CD drive, Mac OSX 10.3.9 or later, 30 MB of available RAM


You can purchase a home license in DVD format for each field trip separately for $60 or you can save 20% when you purchase a home license in DVD format that includes all three field trips for $125 here.

Our family's opinion of this DVD is mixed.  We really enjoyed the wonderful pictures that were included and the ability to scroll around within them.  Our favorite out of the three was the Rainforest.  The information and scientific facts presented were awesome!  For my children, they found reading all of the information became boring quickly.  So, I stepped in to help out sometimes and we also skipped around some.  Our favorite features were the videos included and the games available to play.  This DVD has valuable use for all grade levels.  So, would our family purchase this to add to our curriculum?  Yes, even though the cost gives me a little sigh at first.  The information and ability to use this year after year would convince me to purchase this for our homeschool.

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You can find out what my fellow crewmates thought about The Digital Field Trip Series here.

**Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of this DVD for review purposes.  The opinions expressed here are my honest opinions.  I received no other compensation for this review.
 

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