We recently purchased a "SmartGlobe - Star" version for the kids
Its a traditional looking world map globe by day, that has a computer interface attached to it with lots of options, games and information about countries, cites, continents, anthems, populations and other statistics.
The feedback is via sound - so verbal instructions, music and instrumental sound.
The globe surface is like a modern tablet - its scanned and the hand held pen/wand provides feedback for the position when touched.
There are a lot of different games - some timed and some not, various levels of difficulty and lots of other things to do.
By turning off the lights and selecting the "Constellation" option the globe illuminates from within and the constellations with names, art and lines and major stars.
Since the globe is oriented North Pole up - the constellation labels are also North side up
http://www.oregonscientific.com/us/e...Star-SG18-11-P
That picture is enhanced to show just the stars - by day it looks like any normal Geographic globe - except for the control panel.
The "Star" version we have has all the features of the normal SmartGlobe plus the Nightsky.
So the kids (and big kids) can play find the constellation - very useful for learning your way around the sky.
Once again there are quite a few different features that can be played or used.
My kids can now find their way around the night sky by constellation better than me, they went from being almost world geography illiterate to being able to find most countries by name in a split second - so its been very educational and much more entertaining than any printed world atlas could ever be.
Its been a month now and there is rarely a day where they dont use it.
I did a quick search and couldn't find it listed on the forum, so thought there would be a few that might find this interesting - and not just for the little kids !
Rally
