Parent Review

I have worked for EdAlive/New Horizons for the last five and a half years and I still get excited about the work that Graham is doing for the education of all our children. As a mother of five, I have witnessed the success of his contributions to improving children’s skills many times.

When Graham started New Horizons in 1987 it was to service the growing need for quality IT products for educational purposes. While running a successful and profitable business, Graham felt that there were very few products available that fulfilled all the categories necessary to truly educate our children.

Graham has set out to improve the resources available to teachers and parents to aid in the improvement of literacy and numeracy skills all over Australia and more recently overseas. While Graham, as a teacher, knows the importance of a good teaching aid, he has taken it a step further by making products available and affordable for most families. To do this Graham not only had to develop great software, but come up with strategies to allow it benefit the most people.

The work that Graham has done has targeted what was needed by the wider community to aid our children. The programs he has developed form a foundation of solid content built to encourage and enhance all skill levels in both literacy and numeracy. They are designed to complement a child’s education, giving them the chance to improve and move ahead while remaining a great resource and entertainment all their school lives.

Graham strongly believes that software can be made more appealing to both children and educators using both sound educational content and engaging graphics and game play. To achieve this Graham has set about to bring together a team of people with wide and varied skills. Graham saw that the products would need to be acceptable to teaching staff. He was able to meet these needs by following the curriculum guidelines for each state or country. He also knew that the products would have to engage the child’s imagination. The graphics and game play would have to be competitive with other entertainment packages if the child was to remain focused in what was primarily a learning tool.

While teachers embraced the software, Graham sought to reach more people. Many parents are faced with the desire to help their children, but face the constraints of budget and the knowledge of what is worthwhile. Many options open to supporting our children’s learning are intimidating to parents. Graham set out to break down this barrier by promoting the programs throughout the schools themselves. Graham introduced the Community Software Plan in 2000. This plan allows parents to purchase the software through the school. The plan benefits the whole school community by providing software and rewards to participating schools and allowing parents to purchase software that has a proven usability at an affordable price. All of the EdAlive/New Horizons products are designed to see a child through their school years. They can be used continually as a reinforcement of skills needed on a daily basis. What the child often fails to appreciate is the fact that the fun they are having with the programs is in fact improving their basic skills. Many parents (myself included) have been astounded by the way the child improves simply by ‘playing’ a computer game. The skills such as table work or sentence structure are presented in a fun way that is refreshing and enjoyable to the child.

As a parent I have watched my child wade through some basic maths, drowning in self-doubt, but then witnessed the turn-around as the concepts that were once found difficult became fun and easy through these programs. In my work at EdAlive/New Horizons I speak to many parents. Most of them reinforce my previous comments. All parents want what is best for their child. They hate seeing a child struggle, they want to promote and develop the faster learner but are amazed to see what these programs can do for their child. The fact that Graham East has designed most of these programs to suit not only every child in the family but also the family budget astounds them. The fact that they too can play the programs with their child and other family members and be beaten fairly and squarely by the child surprises them. They find what I vouch for all the time- not only have Graham’s programs benefited the child’s literacy and numeracy but improved the child’s confidence in learning amongst a strong family environment.

Graham East’s motto ‘Every chance for every child’ sums up perfectly what Graham is achieving for the children of Australia and indeed the rest of the world. The programs he develops continually strive to teach and enhance the learning skills needed for all children, gifted or struggling, to show them a confidence in their ability that continues to grow with each step.

Kerry Behrend
24th April 2006