Note: This is rather long post. My 14-year-old son Jason and I have been using Microsoft Student 2006 since the beginning of the current school year with the intent to develop a real-world, in-depth analysis of the benefits it can provide for middle school students preparing for the transition to high school. Given that the holiday season is upon us and we adults are always looking for gift ideas that have a longer duration than current teen fashion trends (which can be just slightly longer than the life span of a Mediterranean fruit fly), we thought right about now would be a good time to publish this review and let you know whether this might be an item for the student in your life (son, daughter, niece, nephew).

Making the transition from middle school to high school can be a pretty traumatic time. I've helped guide one kid through this already and am now on my second (and blessedly last) "bridge year". It's an awkward in-between time of life.

Note: In an early draft of this review, I used the word "tween". Jason says never, ever use the term "tween" if you want to avoid being struck.

This in-between time includes a decided gap in age-appropriate software. Yes, software. Think about it. There's a ton of educational software for grade school aged kids. There are college prep packages for high school students. But what tools exist for the student about to make the leap from middle school to the wilds of high school?

There's a "cool" issue at work here as well. The days where Pajama Sam and The Oregon Trail were engaging diversions are long past. I mean, we're talking role-playing games RPGs, console systems, Dance, Dance Revolution at the arcade, first dates, first cell phones, iPods, and a burgeoning interest in music, games, and movies with slightly out-of-reach ratings.

When I first learned that Microsoft was planning the release of a package called Microsoft Student, I must admit I didn't give it a lot of thought. But, in perusing the press release, I learned that this new package was specifically designed for students at this stage of educational evolution. I figured it could either be a great way to focus some "screen time" on academics rather than RPGs or it would be a total bust - another well-intentioned but ultimately misguided attempt by some marketing sharpie to get into the minds of the youth market.

So I pitched my son Jason on the idea of doing a long-term evaluation of the product. We would both install Microsoft Student on our respective PCs and evaluate it in a real-life way - by using it as a tool for the first part of his eighth grade year. Our criteria for judging the value in the Student suite would be multi-faceted but would come down to a real bottom-line measure - did it help improve his performance?

Normally, a software review is a pretty cursory experience. You install an application, investigate its feature set, interface, and interaction with your existing system, and draw a set of admittedly quick opinions about its merits. I generally allow up to a week to prepare a review of software I've used in the past. I add a bit of time if it's a complex application I've never worked with before.

That M.O. was inappropriate for what we had in mind for evaluating Student. We wanted to get a solid handle on how the suite worked on real homework assignments typically given to middle school students. So we agreed to work with the package for at least the first half of the fall semester before beginning to develop our review.

Of course, you know the old saw about the best laid plans of mice and men, right? They do oft go awry. When those plans are laid by dads and teens, the "awry quotient" increases dramatically. There are few creatures on this planet more easily distracted that 14-year-olds. If you've been there, you know what I mean. If you either don't have children, or are still working your way through the infant/toddler/grade school phases of child-rearing, you'll simply have to take my word for it.

Finally, after much pleading, cajoling, and yes... begging (mixed in with occasional ineffective parental threats), we've finally gotten or thoughts in order and put into words. I'll let Jason relate his experiences to you and then chime in with a few parental thoughts to wrap things up.

But first, let's take a quick look at the contents of the Student package. Microsoft Student 2006 includes:

• Student tools for Microsoft Office: An integrated set of templates, wizards, and Task Pane content developed with middle and high school curriculum in mind. In each subject matter section, for example, there are interactive tools to assist with preparing book reports, research papers, oral presentations, essays, and more.
• Graphing Calculator: A 2D and 3D graphing calculator that provides explanations of functions when the cursor is placed on a button, a variety of skins, and the ability to hide unneeded buttons. This is an enormously helpful tool in households (like ours) where the student is burdened with decidedly right brained parents who are too many years away from their last advanced (or even intermediate) math class.
• Web Companion (pictured here): a toolbar for Internet Explorer that displays content from the Encarta encyclopedia with control to sort by content type (articles, photos, videos, etc.).
• Online Math Homework Help: A number of textbooks are available online (not Jason's unfortunately) as well as standard curriculum elements for Pre-Algebra, Algebra, and Geometry.
• Encarta Encyclopedia: The full boat. The entire Encarta encyclopedia plus a trial subscription to the online version complete with updates to content on a regular basis. You can install all of Encarta locally to your hard drive if you have the disk space. The performance of searching and displaying multimedia content is significantly better if you do this.
• Other goodies: Foreign language tools (translation dictionaries, verb conjugations, and more), educational games and activities (my favorite was "Listening to Jazz"), Online College Prep and much more.

Microsoft Student 2006 requires Office XP or Office 2003, Windows 2000 (SP4) or Windows XP, and a DVD drive. If you don't have an Office license handy, the Student and Teacher Edition 2003 is an ideal (and affordable) Office package for use with Student 2006.

Jason's Review

Not too long ago, I had to do a research project on the colony of Rhode Island for my Social Studies class. The Encarta encyclopedia was incredibly helpful for finding and collecting the reference information I needed. I was amazed by the amount of info available on that one topic. Encarta had information on agriculture, the founding of the colony, the voyage to the New World, where the settlers were from, how they were treated there, how they were treated here, and more. The geography features let me take an in-depth tour of the state, North America, and the World! As an added bonus, I was able take a look at the surface of the moon.

The English and Language Arts section is great. They have reviews of some recent, popular books, such as Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It also has a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a style guide for formatting and designing documents like research papers and book reports. It also includes Literature and Poetry excerpts for quick reference.

The Math section has one of the most useful tools I think I've ever seen on a computer program. The program is a chart maker, and since I know that every student hates charts for being so time consuming, this is a lifesaver. It has a graphing calculator and a link to an online math help site. This online site has things from pre-algebra to advanced algebra and geometry.

The Science section has a ton of functions. It includes videos on subjects like spiders, sharks, fuel cells, fusion energy, life on mars, and more.

The Foreign Language section has excellent translators, including French, Spanish, and German, and the ability to translate between all three of these languages and English.

The Music section is full of information about artists and wonderful music clips. Some of the featured artists are Albert King, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, and much more!

From my perspective as a student, Microsoft Student 2006 has been an invaluable tool for reports, school projects, and homework. It's also a lot of fun to just browse around because there are so many interesting videos, animations, games, and sound clips. I would highly recommend this program to any student who wants to have help for all of their subjects at their fingertips.

Marc's Review

As I mentioned above, my first reaction to Microsoft Student 2006 was somewhat guarded. Like a lot of geek parents who have a natural inclination to buy software and gadgets for themselves and transfer that to their children, I have bought a vast library of educational software for my kids over the years. Very few have proven to be more than a mild and terribly brief diversion. Microsoft Encarta has been a perennial favorite and the fact that Microsoft Student 2006 has Encarta at  its core was a big plus.

As I've watched Jason use Student 2006 over the course of the school year and, on occasion, worked side-by-side with him on research assignments, I've been impressed by three things in particular about the package:

1. User Interface: The UI in Student 2006 is nicely designed with clear, logical organization and effective implementation into the core Office applications, Internet Explorer, and the Windows desktop. I've seen the overload so many of use encounter - that "deer in the headlights" look we all get - when a web search return hundreds of thousands of results on a query. The Web Companion window that appears in Internet Explorer when a search is conducted from the Encarta toolbar is a big winner. I've noticed that Jason tends to search there first and resorts to a general web search only if he is unable to find what he's looking for from Encarta (both the local database and Encarta Online).
2. Project Assistance: From the Student Tools menu in any of the core Office applications, one of the options is Project Assistance (the Word Project Assistance is pictured here). A variety of standard project types, appropriate for middle school assignments is displayed in a docked sidebar that provides a project checklist, and step-by-step guidelines and suggestions. In Word, for example, selecting "Opinion Essay" provides a checklist that walks the student through prewriting, writing, revising, and editing. Each of these activity steps is broken down into a series of actions, many of which utilize popup tutorials or templates that support the project. These materials do a fine job of providing guidance but never cross the line into actually doing any of the actual work on the project.
3. Scope and Breadth: The sheer quantity of content in Student 2006 is simply astounding. One of the complaints I've had about other tools I've provided to my kids is how quickly they seem to hit the boundary of usefulness. Jason and I have been exploring Student 2006 for months and continue to find new and interesting information, diversions, and capabilities very time we fire it up. Although the target market for this product is the student, it is a great aid for parents as well and the Student 2006 license permits you to install the package on more than one PC in your home. I've actually found it to be extremely helpful for some of my own work, truth be told.

When Microsoft released Student 2006, it carried a retail price of $99.00. I've regularly seen it discounted to $69.00 at big box stores. For about the price of a console game cartridge, you can make a serious investment in a tool that will provide a wealth of information and valuable resources that will serve your student well through their high school career.

Our bottom line results? Jason has had the best grade reports this first half of the year since entering middle school. He's less stressed about big projects knowing he has these resources at his disposal. And we've found a new and very enjoyable way for me to be involved in his schoolwork. We give Microsoft Student 2006 an enthusiastic two thumbs up!