Educational-authoring tools go to the head of the class.
Eric Taub
Interactive multimedia applications have obvious benefits for teachers and educators, but sophisticated authoring tools, such as Macromedia Director, come with an intimidating learning curve. Two easy-to-learn authoring programs that don't require any scripting and are tailored specifically for educators have recently been updated. Although the similarities outnumber the differences between Pierian Spring's Digital Chisel 2.0 and Roger Wagner Publishing's HyperStudio 3.0, each program has distinct advantages, depending on the types of applications you want to develop for your students.
Digital Chisel 2.0
Digital Chisel uses a slide-show metaphor. Each document you create, called a project, comprises multiple screens, and students navigate through the project one screen at a time. Each screen is made up of a background and objects, such as text fields, buttons, pictures, and QuickTime movies.
The latest version of Digital Chisel is PowerPC-native. Sounds can now play concurrently with other events, and you can enter text directly into a new text box without having to switch into Browse mode, as you had to in the previous version.
A special strength of Digital Chisel is its ability to create interactive on-screen tests. As you build your screens, you can create buttons that register either "correct" or "incorrect" when students click on them. Digital Chisel's built-in database tracks and scores each student's performance. Version 2.0 also gives you the option of sending the results directly to Pierian Spring's more comprehensive Digital Campus courseware. Digital Chisel comes with a slew of quiz-oriented templates, including ones for true/false, multiple-choice, and picture-matching tests.
Digital Chisel has sophisticated facilities for creating buttons. You can make buttons out of icons and text, enhance them with 3-D shadows, and drag them to different locations. With the program's elegant object-information palette, you can designate as many as 24 sequential events to be triggered when a user clicks on an object.
Rudimentary painting and drawing tools are useful for creating simple backgrounds for your Digital Chisel screens as well as graphic objects that can serve as buttons. If you want sophisticated artwork, however, you'll have to import images created in other programs. Basic frame- and path-animation tools are also included.
To create titles and captions, you build text fields for each screen. Hypertext links can take users from words or phrases to other screens or trigger a variety of events. If you've set up a hypertext link or a button that takes users from one screen to another, you can choose from 18 basic transition effects included with the program. Unfortunately, you can't customize the effects or create your own from scratch.
Digital Chisel events include QuickTime movies, PICS animations, screen-color cycling, prerecorded sounds, video tracks played on a connected laserdisc player, audio tracks played on a connected CD player, or spoken text using the Macintosh Speech Manager. You can also have the program trigger one or two events automatically when a user enters a given screen.
Object libraries provide an extensive collection of prebuilt sounds, pictures, and movies you can use in your screens. A nice feature is the ability to simply drag an object from a library to a screen. A CD-ROM filled with clip art, animations, sounds, and other resources also ships with the program.
Digital Chisel has one serious interface problem. The Undo command undoes not only your last action but also every action since your last save.
HyperStudio 3.0
Like Digital Chisel, the PowerPC-native HyperStudio uses a slide-show metaphor. HyperStudio documents are called stacks, and each stack is made up of individual cards. Although HyperStudio's interactive-testing tools can't match Digital Chisel's, HyperStudio really shines at bringing video and other jazzy multimedia resources into the interactive lessons you create.
In addition to creating buttons and objects on HyperStudio cards, you can define "hot" areas that trigger events -- something you can't do with Digital Chisel. You can also have context-sensitive pointers appear when users move the mouse over hot areas. The events HyperStudio can trigger are also more varied than Digital Chisel's.
For example, not only can you incorporate existing QuickTime movies into HyperStudio cards but -- from directly within HyperStudio -- you can also digitize video captured with a camera and a video-capable Mac. That means you can create buttons that either display a live video feed or record a movie when a user clicks on them. And if you're working with a laserdisc player and a video-capable Mac, you can have HyperStudio display the laserdisc track on the Mac that's running your interactive lesson. With Digital Chisel, you're limited to displaying the track on a monitor attached to the laserdisc player. You can also create some interesting picture-within-a-picture effects by setting up movies to play behind other objects.
HyperStudio has two unique button features. The New Button Actions (NBA) feature lets you create buttons that trigger special events, such as scrolling text fields and objects that reveal or hide themselves. You can also use HyperStudio's HyperLogo programming language (HyperStudio ships with an in-depth tutorial and reference) to add even more functionality.
For those who are lucky enough to have a SLIP, PPP, or gateway connection to the Internet, HyperStudio offers even more unique features. Included with the package is an application called MediaLinker, which lets you store small files on your hard disk that point to selected resources, such as images and sounds, on the Internet. You can preview the resources and import the ones you want into HyperStudio stacks via the Internet just as you would import pictures or sounds from other applications. For hands-on interaction with the Internet, HyperStudio has NBAs that can send URLs to MacWeb or Netscape Navigator, so users can jump directly to World Wide Web sites from within HyperStudio documents.
HyperStudio's frame- and path-based animation capabilities are similar to Digital Chisel's, as are its navigation and transition effects. However, its interactive-testing facilities aren't nearly as robust as Digital Chisel's. HyperStudio lets you define buttons as right and wrong answers to questions, and you can export a text file containing a student's right and wrong answers. However, you have to import the file into a separate database or spreadsheet program to analyze it.
HyperStudio's import facilities for clip art and other resources are easy to use, but you can't simply drag and drop resources into cards. HyperStudio lets you bring in more types of files than Digital Chisel does -- you can import PICT, EPS, JPEG, PCX, BMP, GIF, MacPaint, and Photo CD images, AIFF and snd resources, and PC WAV and Amiga MOD sound files as well as play tracks from audio CDs. A CD-ROM filled with resources and sample student, personal, and business stacks is included.
HyperStudio has a few interface quirks of its own. Its HyperCard-like design is rather dated, and it limits you to having one stack open at a time. Furthermore, the keyboard command for viewing a stack's next card is the same as the Mac's universal keyboard combination for canceling an action. And HyperStudio's interface often seems cluttered with too many buttons and dialog boxes.
The Bottom Line
For two programs that are so easy to use, Digital Chisel 2.0 and HyperStudio 3.0 pack a surprising number of features for teachers and educators. If you're interested mainly in creating interactive exams, Digital Chisel is clearly your best choice. However, if your primary goal is to create whizzy multimedia applications that incorporate digitized video and Internet resources, HyperStudio should be at the top of your list.
Digital Chisel 2.0
Rating: Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice)
Price: Single copy, $119.95; 5-pack, $349.95; site license, $995 (list).
Pros: Simple to learn and use. Excellent interactive-test facilities.
Cons: Flawed Undo command.
Company: Pierian Spring Software, Portland, OR; 503-222-2044.
Reader Service: Circle #404.
HyperStudio 3.0
Rating: Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Price: Single copy, $199.95; 5-pack, $450; 10-pack, $795 (list).
Pros: Simple to learn and use. Excellent tools for incorporating video and a wide variety of multimedia elements into stacks.
Cons: Somewhat dated interface. Interactive-test facilities not as robust as Digital Chisel's.
Company: Roger Wagner Publishing, El Cajon, CA; 619-442-0522.
Reader Service: Circle #405.
Hyperstudio's interactive applications can incorporate a wide variety of multimedia elements, including resources from the Internet.
Digital Chisel's strength is its interactive-test facilities, which include tools for tracking each student's performance.
