Home PublicationsL&LIssuesVolume 27 (1999-2000) September (No. 1)

Two Canadian fifth-grade girls won the 1998 International Multimedia Mania contest using their imaginations fired by HyperStudio. Their teacher describes their project, which includes scrolling text boxes, actor-based animation, claymation, virtual objects, and Internet links. Read more about the Multimedia Mania contest and see some other activities.

Multimedia Mania

The goal of the Multimedia Mania contest, sponsored by ISTE’s HyperSIG (the Special Interest Group of Hypermedia and Multimedia), is to find real, working models of the skillful integration of technology into a typical K–12 classroom setting.

Students are invited to dazzle their global peers by creating dynamic multimedia projects related to any class or coursework. Teachers coach and advise, but entrants have to complete their own work.

Participants are encouraged to incorporate 3-D design, video, animation, and any other multimedia techniques that enhance the design of the project. Heavy emphasis is placed on originality, alignment to curriculum or course content, project design, and proper use and documentation of resources. Projects also gain points if they are constructed entirely within a classroom setting.

The 1999 winners are:

Classroom HyperStudio Projects

Exciting classroom projects incorporating HyperStudio have included the following skills and techniques for third- and fourth-grade students.

101 Dalmatians

Spotted Fabric

• Students digitized animal spotted fabric—such as leopard, tiger, dalmatian prints—using the video or digital camera.
• Once the digital photos of the animal skin had been placed inside the HyperStudio Art Folder, students could access different fabrics for Cruella's clothes. The students then used the paint tools to create a Cruella figure and utilized the cookie cutter technique and draggable graphic features to create stylish clothing. This resulted in an electronic Cruella “doll,” which the viewer could dress in different clothing, such as plunging neckline dresses, and form-fitting pant suits. It is a 1990s version of paper dolls.
• Digital fabric can also be used to create cookie cutter letters for the title cards or for fancy spotted borders for each card.

 Claymation

• Little spotted dogs were fashioned out of plasticene
• Settings were planned in writing first and then production companies of four students were formed to create a cut and paste paper background for the animation stage
• The animation stage is three pieces of hinged plywood which frames an area of space for the action to take place
• Students brought in carpet for the floor/grass, toy furniture for the props
• Using the video camera, computer, HyperStudio, clay dogs, and animation stages students moved the dogs about in the setting and shot the frames
• One student worked the export screen, import video feature for HyperStudio, one student manned the video camera, and the other two students moved the dogs about in little movements

Strega Nona

This is an old Italian fairy tale where Big Anthony minds the pasta pot for the old witch Strega Nona. He gets into a fair amount of trouble and can’t stop the pasta pot from boiling over. The author is Tomie de la Paola

Pasta

• Students digitized spaghetti and macaroni using the video or digital camera. The digital photos were then placed in the HyperStudio Art Folder in all computers in the lab.
• Students were required to retell the story in three different segments—The Beginning, The Middle, and The End—using HyperStudio
• Once work had begun on the project, students were encouraged to use the digital photos of the pasta.
• Challenges were issued to not only animate the characters in the story but also the spaghetti. Students problem solved and found the Don’t Erase feature in the Animator Path to be the solution. This revelation quickly spread throughout the lab.

Plasticene Setting

• Settings for the folk tale were created on masonite boards with plasticene.
• These settings were captured with the video camera and placed in the HyperStudio Art Folder
• Students were challenged to create animation on top of the digital plasticene setting.

Special Effects

• Once the pasta was spilling out of everyone’s pasta pot, the challenge was to get Big Anthony to eat up the pasta, just like in the book!
• Big Anthony was drawn using the HyperStudio art tools and made into a draggable graphic. Once the pasta spilled out of the pot, the viewer was asked to move Big Anthony over to the pot. Once the draggable graphic was moved over the spilled pasta, the pasta or animation path was "eaten" up by the draggable graphic.

Kids’ Jokes for Rosie O’Donnell

Talk show host Rosie O’Donnell was asking for kids to send in Kids’ Jokes for her TV show. She had mentioned on the show that she had a Mac. The class decided to send her interactive jokes created in HyperStudio.

• Teams of two and three students planned a three-card stack
• Permission from parents was received to digitize students’ faces for the introductory card
• The second card featured the joke or riddle with animation
• The third card featured the answer or punch line with more animation
• The entire project was linked together and sent off to New York
• Two months later the entire class received Koosh ball pencils from Rosie O’Donnell
• Parents were invited into the class to view the presentation and donations were taken for Manitoba flood relief

HyperWhoDunnit Mystery

Preplanning and Prewriting

• A mysterious disappearance of a valuable object was set up for the class to solve
• There was to be no violence in the story
• Characters were introduced to the students, and through role play the students created a character synopsis for each victim and suspect
• Each child had a different victim, although the missing object and characters were the same
• Planning cards for HyperStudio were created by the teacher and students filled these out for each victim, suspect, description of the missing object, scene of the crime, clues, and so on.
• Once the writing was completed in class, the students moved to the lab where they reconstructed the crime using HyperStudio skills and techniques
• Digital pictures of the missing object captured by video were used to identify the guilty characters
• Voices of classmates and teachers were used for denials in the story
• Digital pictures of teacher suspects (captured on video) were incorporated into the mystery

The full text and student templates for HyperWhoDunnit are available at www.hyperpeople.com in a booklet titled “HyperWhoDunnit” published by K&R Consultants.

Copyright © 1999, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). All rights reserved.