2. New in 4.0

For users of previous versions of Master Spell. Here's a quick update on what's changed and what's new:

New Drill Window with Animated Owl

Learning is a little more entertaining when it is more personalized. The animated owl is featured in the drill and in the hangman game. Try clicking on the owl.

Animation may lag when using Macintalk 3. Use the Macintalk Pro voices: Victoria, Bruce and Agnes. Though all pronunciations have been optimized for both Macintalk 3 voices (e.g. Kathy, Fred, Whisper) and Macintalk Pro voices, I highly recommend using the Macintalk Pro voice "Victoria High Quality". The high quality voices can be found on your MacOS CD for 8.0 and higher.

Menus Restructured

The dynamic test and pupil menus have been removed in order to eliminate the menubar delay when running Master Spell in network mode. Class, Pupil and Test selection use the same interface. All menu commands are sorted by their objects into their own menus.

New Terms

•  “Taking a test” is now considered “doing a drill” to distinguish
    from test files. So now we do drills on tests.
•  “Trouble Words” are now called “Troublers”.

Hangman Game

For a learning diversion from the rigors of spelling drills, try the hangman game. Like doing drills, the hangman game uses the pupil file and a test file. The number of wins and losses are stored in the pupil file. The test file is the source of words for hangman.

Centralized Preference File for Networked Lab Macs

Previously, it was possible to keep an entire school's pupil files on one file server and have students use Master Spell from any Mac that is on that network to access their pupil files and tests. In this version, a single set of preferences can be used for all lab Macs, ensuring consistency and simplifying the changing of settings on multiple Macs. See 11. School Setup

Class Selection at Pupil Logoff

The option “Select Class at Startup” in the Preferences has been expanded to include selecting class at pupil logoff as well.

New Icon

You may need to rebuild your desktop in order to see the new icon.

If there are other features you would like to see to make Master Spell work better in your classroom or at home, you can always write me: jay@macinmind.com