Hyperstudio is an interactive open-ended application to create projects and presentations. In other words, it is a multimedia authoring tool and a registered Trademark of Roger Wagners Publishing.

This application is very popular in USA at school, both primary and secondary, used by teachers and students, even very young one.

If compared with other multimedia authoring tools, for example Director, Hyperstudio is very limited. But on the other hand, it is a very useful tool in teaching if its possibilities are exploited to fulfil the teaching goals. No need to say that also a considerable amount of creativity is need. Actually, the name of the application tries to convey that: "hyper" = "above" and "Studio" = "artist’s workroom".

Part 1 of this piece of courseware consisted on a stack of 13 cards called "Guests for dinner". Though part 1 has already been assessed. I think it is useful to present again the context in which it was designed. The stack was thought to serve as a revision tool for some communicative situations learnt in class with two different groups of ab-initio students:

- German students , 3 hours a week.

- Irish students, 8 hours a week

The stack would provide a revision/consolidation tool through reading and navigating the stack. Pictures, colors and visual metaphors (e.g. click on the trolley to move to the next card where you go shopping) were there to make the content multimedia and interactive (though actually a very limited interaction).

Animation was introduced just to make it different from a book and more dynamic and entertaining. The revised situations included:

- ringing a friend and inviting them for dinner (phone skills, suggestions, invitation, accepting, rejecting)

- going shopping (phrases is a shop, vocabulary, weights and measurements)

- deciding the menu and cooking the dishes (ingredients, quantities, verbs)

- setting the table (cutlery, depth, prepositions)

- welcoming your friends, offering things

- thanking, accepting

Of course, the group with 8 hours a week had covered them all in semester one while the other group did not get that far until the middle of semester two.

The content was as broad as several lessons in the course book. One of the purposes of presenting them all together and creating a unique situation with them was to show the students that they could follow a little story.

Also to reinforce the thought that language is to do things with it. I also tried to keep the idea of "doing things" along the stack because both course books used with these students follow the communicative approached and, even more, one of them is task based. Students were then used to real life situations, and the stack was no doubt more real than a book.

I added audio to the application, (only to 4 dialogues).

Sixteen students who volunteered did a preliminary test in which they were asked to reproduce some of the communicative situations that later on were to be reviewed in the stack.

Students played with the stack in the lab for about half an hour and after that they were asked to do the same test again and fill in a questionnaire.(see appendix 1)

We do not stop in the findings of the text but on those of the questionnaire, as they are a very valuable feedback to see where we succeeded and how to continue succeeding.

Several students said they have very much liked the audio and being able to read the transcription at the same time. A good number considered the recipes, which were mainly a reading activity, long and boring. When asking them "what would you add/recommend?" some say to create a similar stack for other situations covered in the course. Obviously they took the question in a broader sense than it was meant. The answers given by those who understood that the question referred to the present stack could be summarize this way:

- a glossary with all the new vocabulary

- a way of testing what you have learnt

- grammatical explanation of some of the phases used

- more audio

This implementation has two main aims:

1) to follow the students’ recommendations and wishes. This would allow us to say that we have developed a piece of courseware more complete than the previous one, and therefore with more chances to be integrated into the module to support learning.

2) to use features of Hyperstudio that were not used to create part 1. This would increase our knowledge of the application and the exploitation of its possibilities.

Part 2 is meant to be more interactive than part 1 and also is meant to include some test and feedback. How did we do that?

We did a bit of research to find out what other possibilities and features Hyperstudio had and how to exploit them to get the maximum interaction. The reality is that Hyperstudio doesn’t allow much interaction, but we managed to create some.

1) Home card to offer the different revision options: vocabulary, grammar, a test, some questions

2) 4 cards for vocabulary revision. Students have to drag a graphic object to match the name. If correct they receive a positive feedback (sound or animation) if incorrect they receive negative feedback (sound or animation). This effect was achieved using the testing function of the buttons, and making the graphic objects draggable .

3) 3 cards for grammar revision. In one we present the phrases to invite somebody to do something and the phrases to accept or reject. Then they have to listen to an example and answer in a loud voice. We decided it was much better to listen that to read it, because this would allow the integration of another skill. While they are being suggested something, a small animation related to what it is being said appears on the screen. For example: Why don’t we go for a walk? And Addy walking crosses the screen. This was done by adding the actions "play a sound" and "play animation" to the button. The oral skill is also integrated, as they have to choose one of the phases for accepting/rejecting and respond to the invitation.

Again they are reviewing and practicing in context and the multimedia elements implement the communication and allow a little bit of fun. Better than a book?

The second card presents the different phrases used in a shop both by customer and shop assistant. Colors are an aid here. The user is invited to go to the shop by clicking on the trolley.

In the third card all we get is the form of a dialog in the shop where only the word "shop assistant" is written before his line and, in a different color, instructions and pictures for the student to formulate his lines. If you want to read what the shop assistant tells you, you click on the word "shop assistant". Using the GhostWriter NBA we got the lines by the shop assistant to be typed in the screen.

Example:

The student, interpreting the picture has to say: I would like a bottle of wine. Then, clicking on the button again the ghost writer says: A bottle of wine, here you have, 550 pts. And so on.

-brilliant effect of the Ghost writer.

• Student has to formulate a request but he does not know what is going to be said. When we do this type of exercise in a book, students know what is being said after them. (see example in the appendix). In this case they do not, which makes it more real.

- The shop assistant "ghostly" responses are thought so that they give some feed back to the student. In the example above, he says "a bottle of wine", which was the picture that had to be interpreted by the students. If Hyperstudio had speech recognition possibilities this type of exercise could be very much implemented.

- we manage to introduce the oral skill, though, again due to the limits of the application, no feedback in pronunciation is given.

Some students said that the indications about where to click next were not very clear. I tried to facilitate navigation in part 2.

Web link in part one was just for navigation. In part 2 this link has a little task. Students have to write the instructions for frying an egg and then they have to visit the site and make sure both their grammar and "frying egg" methodology are correct!

The previous sections explain the content of our courseware and the process for its creation. We would like to comment than, while doing our research to find out further possibilities of Hyperstudio we realized not only of its limitations but also of its "unlimitations". As we said at the very beginning, Hyperstudio demands creativity on behalf of the creator

Though some of the students said they would like a glossary, we have decided not to include it for several reasons. One of them is the target language. Why Spanish-English if I am thinking of integrating this in a module for Irish and German students? Secondly, because we think this would be not exploiting the maximum potential of multimedia. We have other medium (e.g. graphics) to complement the text. Now translation into other language is not needed.

Having implemented our first stack, and having based that implementation on research results, we consider that this piece of courseware could be integrated in our module, always keeping in mind the purpose for which it was originally thought: a revision and consolidation tool. Perhaps next year, instead of a voluntary activity, it could be done in the time for class.

One of the conclusions from analysis the tests and questionnaires was that people learn in different ways. Some loved the idea of working with the computer. Some found colours and pictures a great aid, others liked seeing everything so logically presented. This proves the existence of multiple intelligences and how multimedia can reach them all more successfully than the blackboard or a book.

A very interesting experiment would be to give the students the task of designing similar stacks with different topics (actually one of them said that). They would definitely learn the content, they would implement their presentation skills, technology skills, research skills etc. In brief, all the benefits of using technology for education. We hope this could be done soon, even if at the beginning it is in a very limited scale.