A Letter From the Publisher

By Richard B. Thomas

Joseph Kennedy II won the Democratic primary nomination in the Eighth Congressional District of the state of -- -- -- . The sitcom -- -- -- has drawn more viewers than any other on TV.*

As this academic year begins, thousands of high school students across the country will be answering these and similar questions as they tackle a new learning device that combines journalism, state-of-the-art computer technology and old-fashioned fun. Developed jointly by TIME and IBM, CoverMaker is a weekly current-events quiz drawn from the pages of the magazine and played on ) an IBM personal computer.

Since the electronic game was introduced on Sept. 3, 678 schools in 45 states have signed up through the TIME Education Program. Each participating institution is sent an instruction manual and a diskette containing dozens of questions. Once a week a teacher or student simply makes a local telephone call and automatically receives, free of charge, the week's quiz. Students who score high and correctly answer the bonus history question are allowed to enter their names on a computerized national honor roll. In addition, highscoring schools will become eligible for a total of $10,000 in scholarship money provided by TIME and IBM.

Prior to its launching, CoverMaker was extensively tested in a yearlong pilot program that involved 80 teachers and 2,000 students in 50 schools. The response from both groups was overwhelmingly positive. "The students love it," reports Georgia Lee, an American-history teacher at Captain Shreve High School in Shreveport, La. "They come in before school, during lunch, after school. Some of them were students who didn't even know where the library was before CoverMaker."

Project Manager David McGowan found his experience as an educator invaluable while helping to develop the program. "I would have loved to have something like this when I was a teacher," says McGowan, who taught social science at Manhattan's Collegiate School from 1984 to 1986. "The game actually makes taking a test enjoyable." Notes TIME Public Affairs Director Steve Cohen: "High school students are very important to TIME. We hope to get them interested in the news and to familiarize them with the range of topics available in the magazine."

FOOTNOTE: *Answers: Massachusetts; The Cosby Show.