Educational software for design technology, ICT and mathematics.  

 

 

Aspex Software United Kingdom

  Educational Software for young people

 

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Educational Software for Home and School

                                                                   For Windows and Mac OS X computers 

"Aspex Software sell great educational software,

including a big hit in Year 5: Spex+"

                                                                                            Brookfields School London

3D View of a Spex Bedroom.
Some Nets in Shapes & Nets A bedroom designed in Spex A picture made in Draw

Aspex Software is a long established British educational software company, developing software for schools and home users since the early 1990's. Our programs are in daily use by children and adults because they are stimulating, relevant, easy to use, and fun!

 

Well known for our SPEX and tabs programs, Aspex educational software products are used in primary and secondary schools in many different countries, and are a popular choice by parents for their children to use on computers at home.

 

"I will certainly make sure my schools know how

highly I rate working with Aspex Software."

                                                                                        M.F. Somerset ICT Services

 

The Aspex Software story:

 

Aspex Software started out in 1994 with the development of Spex and tabs educational software programs for schools and both programs became popular very quickly. Of course, we had the advantage that there were not so many educational software titles around at the time and both Spex and tabs quickly found their way into a software hungry education market.

 

It's an amazing tribute to the simple design of this software that both Spex and tabs are still being sold today and are more popular than ever.

In a nutshell, Spex is used by children to design rooms and other places. They drag items of pre-made furniture into a room and view it in the bird's eye view and in a 3D view; budgets, graphs etc are included in the software.

 

In the tabs software one draws cuboids, pyramids, prisms and other shapes and these are joined together on the screen to make a 3D model. The nets are printed out so the tabs model on the computer can be made in to a real world model with paper, card and glue.

Buyers of either program, particularly Spex shouldn't expect to see an all singing all dancing software program with flashing lights and shoot'em'up. In contrast a main reason for the popularity of Spex has been its simple and modest style, which means that a teacher can put Spex in front of a whole class of pupils and they all know how to use it! This has been one of the many benefits of the software in schools. Teachers love Spex and the children love Spex too!

Spex was first published for Acorn Computers which were very popular until around the mid 1990's when the share of Acorn computers in schools started to diminish in favour of PC's which had become the mainstream in business.

 

The rapid conversion of Spex to work on PC's secured the continuity of its use in schools as they ramped up the expansion of IT in their classrooms. Spex thrived on the PC in schools to become one of the most popular educational software programs around, alongside other successful programs from the UK's original developers like Topologika with their music box program, Kudlian Soft with DataSweet, and 4Mation with their Maths, Literacy and Spelling programs. All of these educational software companies continue to grow their range of products today, ten years later!

Spex found its usefulness in several curriculum areas in education, including Design Technology, ICT and Mathematics, all under the guise of a room designer.

 

We try not to market it as just a room designer though, rather, the room design aspect of Spex is a cover story to get children to grapple with design, spatial awareness, money, budgets and dimensions, mapping and much more.

 

Quite early in its development Spex was even recognised by the ICT agency as the ideal bridge into the abstract area of spreadsheet modelling! And all this learning is happening while children are just having fun designing their favourite bedroom and lots of other places.

In 2007 even though there are now thousands of educational software titles in the market, Spex still prospers! Marketing nowadays is a different story however, and much harder, the larger companies have raised the game in terms of quality and quantity of sales material and schools are bombarded with a spectacular array of new and fantastic educational software to choose from.

Spex continues to benefit from its long term popularity because most of the sales, according to our research are made by word of mouth, and that must be the greatest testament to any product.


Teachers, parents and children buy Spex because they like it; Teachers like Spex because of the benefits it provides in the classroom combined with a short learning curve to get to grips with a new software, and parents and children buy the software because they love it, it's simple but so much fun!

 

Spex might be dead simple but it has captured the imagination of several generations of school children, some of whom will be buying Spex for their own children as the software is developed during the next few years.

Spex has gained a real foothold in the educational software market and has endeared itself to thousands of teachers and children.


The story behind tabs is different to that of Spex but very similar in one respect; tabs is also one of the longest established educational software products ever developed.

tabs, like Spex, was first developed for the Acorn computer and was rapidly converted to PC as a matter of survival in the 1990's when schools switched. The development to put tabs on the PC was timely, for its release coincided with a contract to supply the software to 7000 schools in the UK!

tabs development on the PC resulted from the persistent lobbying of a North American company, The KnowledgeTree inc, which was champing at the bit to see tabs software on their computers.

The KnowledgeTree soon put its money where its mouth was and started winning orders for tabs in Canada and in America. Before long tabs was being used successfully in thousands of schools on the American continent and some large education orders ensued. The biggest contracts were to make tabs available to 5400 schools in the Province of Ontario and 2200 in the State of Sao Paulo! tabs is found in other hot spots around America, and we are really pleased to see tabs installed into over 300 schools in New York!

tabs is popular in lots of different schools, primary, secondary and special needs; it seems that some youngsters who have difficulty in some learning areas can adapt to the relative complexity of 3D modelling with more ease than most.

The attraction of tabs for the home user is found in its ability to display the unfolded shapes on the screen, as nets, and to print these out with tabs on to make a real model; hence the name of the software!

 

Many a colourful tissue box, just the twinkle of an idea on the computer the night before, has been presented to Mum on Mothers day!

Development has continued and the current range of tabs educational software, called aspexTabs and aspexTabsMST, is still finding new users both at school and at home. In the early days tabs enabled the user to draw 3D shapes and print out their nets, but now, in aspexTabsMST you can now create a whole variety of geometric shapes, colour them, put images on the faces, view different projections in the 1st and 3rd angle and still print the nets to make a real world model of your design.

 


 

Aspex Software looks after its customers

     
  "I cover seven schools on my patch for IT services and often need to talk to companies like yours when glitches happen. You know the score, loads of software on biggish networks, you get problems from time to time.

It was so refreshing to get straight through to someone who was prepared to listen and then put into place some direct help. Usually after ten to fifteen minutes being transferred round the world, I get someone who is not that customer focussed. The school I was at, at my request had a phone put in the IT suite - there's no mobile signal in most of the schools, rural Somerset.......you showed how effective telephone support can be. My most favourable comment is that you listened to what I had to say and responded with support AND encouragement.

Please pass this on to your management, I will certainly make sure my schools know how highly I rate working with Aspex Software. The school were delighted with your attitude and I'll look forward to installing the new version of Spex. "
 

 

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