Rober Wagner Publishing, Inc.

Hyperstudio is a multimedia authoring tool which allows us to present a project using sounds pictures and text and to blend it together using hypertext. It allows children to become the the producers of information rather than the recipients. The students are at the centre of the the educational process.
Founded in 1978 by a classroom teacher, Robert Wagner Publishing developed Hyperstudio as a software system that emphasized technology as a personal creative tool. The idea behind Hyperstudio was to support teachers with a vision of how the meaningful and appropriate use of technology could foster a more individual and humanistic learning environment.
It is based on non-technical  application and is minimalist in design. While many programs work through an abstract or symbolic layer between you and your work, Hyperstudio tries to be transparent tool for communication, so that you and your students can concentrate on the content and the message.
Hyperstudio is a multimedia writing and presentation system that has become the standard in many schools for multimedia projects. It allows anyone to create multimedia programmes. The tool is simple enough to be used by primary school children from a very early age.

Advantages

• The philosophy is user-centered, because children learn by doing.

• The approach is constructivist because people learn best when they create meaning using multimedia tools.

• The software adopts a minimalist design, because keeping things simple increases understanding and speeds learning.

• The language is non-technical so that you use more time using Hyperstudio than you do figuring it out.

• It is totally integrated software. You won't waste time or risk confusion at dealing with several different programmes.

• It has been adopted by a number of Teaching Training Colleges as a standard tool for creating projects, reports and presentations in the same way as Powerpoint is used in the professional world.

 
Pedagogical Theory and Multimedia Authoring

As teachers become technologically competent we must look for ways to integrate technology into the classroom and the curriculum in a meaningful way. Thanks to the growth of the Internet and other multimedia formats such as CD ROM the communication of information in visual format is more important than ever. We and the children are used to having information presented to us in a multimedia format. If we accept this then a natural progression would be for our students to begin persenting their own ideal and research in a similar way.

The use of multimedia and hypertext in the classroom has the potential to change the way we teach and the way children learn. It is a tool which can be used for any subject. It has a particularly attractive and effective role in language teaching as it allows for the presentation of the text in a voice format. What the student writes he can say, what he sees he can name and the language is in his own voice. So the students have the opportunity to decide how they want to present their ideas and information. By it textually, visually or via sound. All the options are available with a multimedia package. The use of a package such as Hyperstudio allows the children to become the producers of informatilon rather than the recipients.

Student Advantages

It gives the teacher another and effective means of transferring language learning and in doing that is a very flexible medium. It allows the teacher to create a flexible learning environment which allows for active engaged learners.

Active engaged learners are :

• Responsible for their own learning. The word they produce is a result is a result of their own curiosity. It is their creation and it is what they intended creating.

• Energised by learning. Their work feels both important and worthwhile.

• Strategic. In the form of their multimedia authoring package and access to information and the children make their own choices to solve a problem or to present information.

• Collaborative. The students collaborate in formulating their objectives and deciding on material and presentation.

See Sample Pages from the Project

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