Here at Kidsource, we share excerpts from The Computer Museum Guide, advice from the authors, special tips about choosing titles, new-product reviews, plus industry news about kids' software. Check in regularly for updates!

What's The Computer Museum?

The Computer Museum in Boston is the country's only museum focused exclusively on computer technology. It's introduced more kids and families to computers than any other place in the world.

With record numbers of computers being purchased for home use - they're selling at the rate of two per second right now! - the Museum was seeing more and more families introduce their kids to computing. Lots of families were looking for advice. And parents told the Museum they wanted a software review as reliable as Consumer Reports and as lively and down-to-earth as Siskel and Ebert.

So in partnership with the Museum, authors Cathy Miranker and Alison Elliott put its decade of experience to work to answer parents' questions.

Kids and Computers: What's the Museum's Vision?

Thanks to the Museum's years of creating and testing interactive learning exhibits, the Computer Museum Guide has a unique perspective - and exceptionally high expectations - about children's software.

We believe the computer can be far more - and far better - than a quiz master, drilling kids on math facts or state capitals.

We favor software that uses technology to let kids learn by doing ... that encourages kids to create ... to experiment ... to make choices ... to solve problems (or better still, to create problems to solve!) ... that creates a compelling environment for exploration. That stimulates kids' natural curiosity and satisfies their intrinsic need to learn.

Guided by expectations like these, the Museum created a book that serves as a road map to the best things a child can do with a computer. We think you'll find that The Computer Museum Guide charts a quick route to the best titles for your child's age, interests and learning style.

How Do We Evaluate Children's Software?

There were three stages to our evaluation process.

• First we worked with Museum experts to develop an exacting set of standards.
  
• Next we personally tested close to 1,000 titles against those ideals.
  
• Then, programs that made it past this first level of scrutiny were turned over to the toughest critics of all, our test families. These families used the software in their homes over several months. And we spent lots of time talking with kids and parents, one on one, to understand what they liked and why.
  

We'd like to give you a closer look at the questions we asked during every evaluation, so you can begin subjecting programs to the same kind of scrutiny.

Our criteria sound simple enough:

• Learning
• Looks
• Longevity

And finally, we asked the most important question of all: does the software bring a truly new dimension to learning?