»From Elizabeth’s Desktop...
Technology was first introduced into my college life, and later in 1980 into my classroom. I first began using it as a teacher tool, but later realized the greater power it had in the hands of students.
Later in 1987, I was pushed into the infancy of multimedia. My principal asked for volunteers to work on a state-funded technology project integrating math and science with laserdisc technology. I liked technology, was good at math, and it was my first week in a new position; I thought it would be a good decision. The next four years were busy with learning program design, authoring, and presenting. Technology quickly became a passion and introduced the tug of "techno-lust" into my life.
 As I attempted to integrate technology and a variety of multimedia authoring programs into my own classroom, my mother and a local computer club introduced me to another multimedia program for the iigs. I liked the approachability that HyperStudio® provided for my students. One of our first projects was a yearlong, autobiographical project. Each month, my third grade students applied and related the classroom curricular themes to their life. As we read Ramona and Her Father, students related their favorite anecdote about a family relationship. We learned how to digitize our voices and our faces. By spring Open House, students had completed their projects and lined up with their parents to share their interactive autobiography.
Over the years, my classrooms have varied from middle school, elementary, high school students, university, conference workshops, and joyfully my own daughters. I rejoiced at the excitement I saw in my own daughter’s eyes as she demonstrated her fourth grade multimedia report on California Missions during Open House. In the hands of a child multimedia is a wonderful tool to demonstrate thorough understanding of a topic.
. . . Elizabeth |
»It’s a Small World
 Karen and Elizabeth first met in 1992 when the Association for Christian Schools International decided to design a technology network for Christian schools in southern California. Little did we know that we shared a common history with Roger Wagner Publishing and HyperStudio®. We both had been asked by Roger Wagner Publishing to present student HyperStudio® projects at the Computer Using Educator Conferences held here in California in prior years. These are conferences held in the fall for northern California educators, and in the spring for educators in the southern section of the state. The same academic year, we were both sharing strategies for classroom implementation of multimedia and student projects to audiences at opposite ends of California. Elizabeth presented at the fall conference in Santa Clara and Karen in the spring at Palm Springs, and the rest, they say, is history.
If you have decided to take the plunge into multimedia, or if you are still on the diving board pondering that jump, welcome! Here are some reasons that will validate your decision, or hopefully, encourage you to make such a decision.
First, multimedia allows you to integrate more effectively the increasingly vast volume of information students need to learn. It provides the vehicle for students to become adept communicators in an information-based society. It also allows students to gain in-depth knowledge without sacrificing content in an increasingly standards-based environment. Finally, although the tools of technology continue to change rapidly, multimedia continues to evolve and remains the content glue that gives purpose to the use of these tools.
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