So my school district used this Pearson program called Successmaker Enterprise which consisted of smaller programs that the local computer administrator would assign to you based on your grade level/progress.
The modern version looks like this:
The version I grew up with more than a decade ago had no clear characters. But what it did have, is pretty decent pixel art, and a very 90's edutainment vibe. I can't find much about the old program other than a few screenshots from a Successmaker New Zealand website, which doesn't look 100% legit. And maybe from another website or another. I know it ran on Windows XP and maybe Windows 2000. This is what the hub to get to the programs looked like:
The screenshots I can get of the actual programs are: Story Painter
Writer's Studio
Reading Investigations
Reading Adventures
There's more but these are the one's I remember primarily.
It's so weird though because I cannot find any video evidence of these programs. (Maybe I'm not looking hard enough?) I can't even find a ROM. I mean this program had to be in a ton of schools nationwide, why can't I find more proof? My mother was the principal of an elementary school, and I know they used that program until at least 2010. She said she found the disc for Story Painter once before she changed schools, but that she lost it. That really sucks too, because Story Painter was the most fun program, and is a really great time capsule of the late 90's.
Some Fairfax school administrators say they like the software but are concerned about its cost -- about $55,000 to buy and install SuccessMaker in a lab with 10 computers.
This means it's pretty unlikely you'll find any copies on eBay, etc. Your best bet would probably be to continue asking people who worked in elementary schools around that time.
Dang i've been searching for the same stuff. I made a thread for story painter just today lol i couldnt find a shred of proof of the game but after some help we found images of it one of which is the same image posted above:p would love to see this game again
Dang i've been searching for the same stuff. I made a thread for story painter just today lol i couldnt find a shred of proof of the game but after some help we found images of it one of which is the same image posted above:p would love to see this game again
Eletrikfiyed, you were homeschooled, so you might be able to help figure out if this was made available to home consumers. Do you remember being able to keep programs your school sent at the end of the school year, or did you have to send them back?
"Weekend? It's Monday already."
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We sent them all back the only thing we kept was a complete set of textbooks from lifepac, but i looked that up and thats part of a Christian homeschooling program so it might be two different programs. Also seeing this thread makes me question wether i actually had the disc to story painter, or wether it was just included digitally. Which would have been sent back with the computers we loaned from the program. Also, i don't know where storybook weaver deluxe fits into all this that too might have been mixed memories or something separate entirely. Maybe i was thinking of something like writers studio instead . Now that i know what the program was, and that there were more games included in that i recall the titles of.
Lifepac could have bought the program and sent it to their students on the school-provided computers or on disks. If students were allowed to keep the disks after their year was over, there could be a chance there were copies out there. A standard school board would do the same thing, but add them to school desktops instead.
If an experienced person wants to head the search, I'm in. I have no experience in this area of hunting, so I don't even know where I would start. I'm willing to document this and call it dead.
"Weekend? It's Monday already."
LMWF God: (noun) a person who posts a lot on this forum
If an experienced person wants to head the search, I'm in. I have no experience in this area of hunting, so I don't even know where I would start. I'm willing to document this and call it dead.
yeah im no good at hunting either lol:/.. minor note, i asked my mom about the lifepac thing and she said that was a different thing. we ordered those books for paper copies while the computer thing was a different program directly from the school board and government-funded that's how we were able to afford successmaker instead of having to pay like $55k lol
You wouldn't have to pay $55k for it. It's 55k for 10 computers or ten licenced copies. It would be $5500 USD per licence. A semester of university at the University of Toronto costs $7000 CAD now, just for some perspective. Hopefully, that would include many different programs. I posted a chart of products in the other thread, but the Successmaker program may not have offered all of them.
Edit: Found a Successmaker Course Catalogue. There is a screenshot of Story Painter's title screen on page 5. The Successmaker program also states that it has systems to analyse student performance, indicating it may have run on a server and that there were no disks.
Edit 2: Thanks, FAQ! "CCC provides a total solution sale for our products, including software training and installation. Pricing varies, depending on your school or district's needs and how you would choose to implement the systems. Pricing starts at $125 for select single course licenses with opportunities for reduced prices for volume purchases. "