Nessy includes the following options:
Nessy Learning Program - this is a bank of activities and resources which are of particular interest to special education teachers, as they have been developed by teachers with significant experience in teaching students with dyslexia. The learning approach used is phonics based, and there are numerous spelling, reading, games and printable pages on offer. It will run on everything from Windows 98 onwards, including Vista.
Nessy Tales - this is a set of stories which are read aloud by a narrator as the words are highlighted on the screen. This is useful for students who are beginning to master the link between phonemes and graphemes but who have an interest level in reading which is not matched to their actual reading skill. Only the first of the stories was available on the demonstration CD, but based on this the stories are well read and appealing to an early elementary age group, and the animation and visuals would appeal to the same age range. The prompts on screen are simple and easy for a child to follow, or could be set up with adult assistance. The voice used is easy to listen to, and does not have an obvious accent as occurs with some educational software.
Nessy Fingers - this is a simple introductory program to teach children to keyboard. It is visually appealing, and has a dash of comedy (Nessy tries to type first!) to keep students interested. My six year old was not motivated by the program, which makes sense given the suggested age range of eight plus. For special needs learners, the skill of keyboarding is an important one to master, and it is one which is often neglected. There is a temptation to only teach mouse skills, or to accept single finger typing from special needs learners, but it is a useful teaching tip to ensure students are able to keyboard at least using a few fingers on each hand.
Nessy Gamesplayer - this is a great special education resource, as it combines equal measures of fun, appealing visuals and some satisfying sound effects. The learning content seemed good, although the demonstration version I reviewed only had a limited number of options available. A useful tip with this game is to check the mouse control skills of your special needs students before attempting the games, as some require quite good mouse control and would be frustrating to play without this skill. This is particularly the case with the fishing game, which required visual tracking, anticipation, prediction and precise mouse control to be combined to catch the fish and thus proceed with the game.
