Super Hero Stories

“Diamond Girl” and “Meateater” were just two of the many “super hero” stories that were created by sixth grade students after interviewing their second grade buddies. Sixth graders used HyperStudio to write and illustrate the stories. HyperStudio’s multimedia capabilities allowed students to include hand-drawn illustrations, photos of their buddies and sound affects. It was gratifying to see the smiles on the young student faces as they read the stories for the first time last week. Many of the superheroes were creatively illustrated using a photo for the student’s face and the body drawn with HyperStudio tools and colors.

I believe that HyperStudio is one of the best software programs for students to show their knowledge and understanding of a topic. The program can be used in almost any curricular area from second grade through high school. This powerful tool allows students to create “stacks” that can include text, buttons, pictures, sound, animation, movies, and hand-drawn graphics. Student learning of content can easily be identified through the combination of these elements. At the beginning of the school year second grade students created stacks about the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly that included text and hand-drawn illustrations of each phase. Fifth grade students created a presentation on an award-winning book that showed more sophisticated illustrations and in-depth reflections on the story.

Software MacKiev purchased HyperStudio and announced that they would be releasing Version 5 in late Summer, 2007, first for the Mac and later the PC. I am hoping the Version 5 will be released in the imminent future since it is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful software programs for enhancing classroom learning.

The full press release on HyperStudio 5 can be read at: http://hyperstudio5.com/press.htm

Wikis and Learning

To encourage collaboration and see the impact on student learning, I created and used wikis with students this year. My “letsshare” wiki was used by three different book clubs. The Diary of Anne Frank and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry was used by fifth grade groups; On My Honor was used with a fourth grade group. The wikis were structured to promote high level thinking and included pages with guiding questions, reflections, comparisons, predictions, character analysis, and links to outside resources.

The “ancientgreecemuseum” wiki was used by a sixth grade class to share information about the Cultural Universals of Ancient Greece: artistic expression, authority and government, basic needs, daily life, geography and climate, power, recreation and leisure, technology, and trade and economy. There was a page for each Cultural Universal where students shared their research and reflected on how the Ancient Greeks used human ingenuity to change their society. They also used the space to brainstorm ideas for a museum they were designing as a culminating project. It was fascinating to see how the trade and economy group used font colors to distinguish important concepts in their research; a key identified pink text as items that the Greeks traded; blue text was where they traded; and black text was money or other.

The wikis supported collaborative learning, yet the page history provided a level of individual accountability. Students were told that their pages could be viewed by anyone and letters were sent to parents inviting them to view the content. I believe that this “world audience” was highly motivational for students and gave them a sense of responsibility for the information, and final wiki pages contained high quality content.

My experience this year has shown that wikis provide a venue for organizing and presenting information in collaboration with others and are highly motivational for students.

If you would like to view the wikis, visit http://letsshare.wikispaces.com/ or http://ancientgreecemuseum.wikispaces.com/.