Zane offers a subscription service to their video library on academic subjects. These videos are designated for elementary, junior high, and high school levels. Categories consist of Art, Biology, Geography, Health, History, Library Skills, Literature, Music, Religious Studies, Science, and Social Sciences. Within these categories are subcategories. For instance, under Geography you find the following subcategories: Geography Introduction, US Geography, and Elementary World Geography. Under the subcategory Elementary World Geography are these videos: Lollipop Dragon Goes Continental and Lollipop Dragon Explores Communities. At the present time, Zane is offering a free trial period so that you can check out their service.

All the videos I viewed were slide shows of still pictures with text under them and a narrator reading the text aloud. These would be excellent for auditory learners. As you watch the videos, there is a selection box on the right-hand side of the slideshow that enables you to select additional related videos. In the top left-hand corner are buttons for questions and answers and for quizzes, but those buttons were not working on the trial version. In the FAQ section of the website, Zane states that their quizzes are in Flash .swf files. They additionally state, "Each interactive quiz offers 20 questions that are drawn each time from a pool of over 100 questions so as to ensure that they can be used effectively to test you repeatedly on what you have learnt from each video. Each of our online interactive quizzes tells you whether your chosen answer is correct or incorrect. It then also tells you why it was correct or incorrect. Therefore each quiz enables you to continue the learning process of the subject or topic you have chosen."

The concept of an online video library is a great one. The ability to click on a selected video that corresponds with what you are studying and let your child watch it as part of their curriculum is enticing. This brings some extra interest to the textbook material. I have reservations about using this particular service, however, because some of the videos I previewed were very secular in nature. Evolution was stated as fact and not theory, and the origin of the earth was portrayed in a non-Biblical light. It would be very time-consuming to preview all the videos before presenting them in the classroom, and I do not have time to do that when I am preparing daily lessons for two very distinct age groups. It is a matter of personal discretion whether or not this service would be of benefit to your homeschool.

Product review by Christine Hindle, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, January 2010