Test Drive--iQuest Handheld

Study Aid/PDA

By Jeffrey Hastings -- School Library Journal, 4/1/2005

LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc., 6401 Hollis Street, Suite 100, Emeryville, CA 94608-1071 (800) 701-LEAP www.leapfrog.com. $49.99. Additional cartridge packs $14.99.

The iQuest handheld is a real boon to old codgers like me, who love to remind students how much harder things were "back in the day." When I was a middle school lad, studying was simple: you read from the assignment in your textbook, walked five miles through knee-deep snow the next day, took the test, and settled for whatever grade you earned. Sometimes, you got lucky and earned an A, other times, you missed a few key concepts and spent the remainder of the day mulling them over while sitting in a corner, sporting an oversized cone-shaped hat.

These days, kids lucky enough to have an iQuest can avoid failure completely by taking review quizzes before it's crunch time. They simply insert a corresponding subject cartridge, select a textbook and chapter, and test away. Operating on four AAA batteries, the device keeps score, while music, graphics, and a realistic voice impart game-show excitement to otherwise routine content. Cartridge packs, which cover content from more than 260 textbooks, are available for science, math, and social studies for grades five to eight.

I shared the iQuest with Jamie Klausing, Michigan's middle-school Science Teacher of the Year, and she was impressed by the degree to which the quizzes mirrored the content of the textbooks she uses. "And, while [the quizzes] are very textbook-specific," she added, "it's not a shortcut past in-depth learning; kids really need to have carefully read the text to get the answers correct."

Klausing passed the device along to J. J., a seventh grader who already owns an older iQuest model. He gave the new unit a thumbs-up. "It has better controls and the keyboard is easier to use," says J. J.

But the three of us agreed that there was one thing that would improve the iQuest handheld: more diagnostic feedback. Although the handheld scores quizzes, it doesn't remind users of the content they need to revisit in order to improve.

Still, the iQuest makes test preparation so much easier than it was when I was a kid that the old codger in me growls, "It just ain't right!"