Clicker as a Multimedia Authoring Tool
New to the schools this fall is an upgrade to Clicker. Clicker 4 was previously licensed and it found a good home in a number of classrooms. The upgrade, Clicker 5, has been ministry licensed and it should find a home in all primary classrooms.
It is one of those delightful programs that is so easy and intuitive to use. Designed with the student in mind, the goal is to make students avid readers and writers. It was always billed as a "talking word processor", but with all of the enhancements in the upgrade to Clicker 5, it may well become one of your favourite multimedia authoring tools.
If you've ever attended one of my "Multimedia Authoring with ..." workshops, you'll recognize this. I think that it's the perfect activity to introduce the multimedia concepts and it's also a terrific way for students to create their first project. It's a two page joke or riddle. First page is the question; second page is the answer.
Let's get started. After starting Clicker 5, choose the option to Create a New Grid Set.
From the bookmaking section, we'll create a custom new grid set.
The first page that appears will be our title page. Now it's time to add some content. From the top menu Edit item, choose "Edit Mode". This lets us change the contents of the grids (areas) on the screen. Note that a pop up edit palette appears.
Hold down the SHIFT key and select the title text and change it to "The Chicken".
In the big grid area, hold down the SHIFT key and type our first text. "Why did the chicken REALLY cross the road?"
It would be nice to have a picture of a chicken. Click on the "Pictures" icon on the editing palette. Great! There's a whole folder entitled "Animal Life". Sadly, there are no chickens but there is a rooster. He'll do! Select the rooster and drag him to the grid.
Finally, hold down the SHIFT key and provide instructions at the bottom to send our user to the next page for the answer.
From the Grid menu item, let's add a grid. You have a choice of grid formats. I'll choose the plain looking "Page 1" and I'll insert it after the current grid.
Aha! There may be no chicken, but there's a raccoon. Drag the raccoon to the large grid area and add our zinger "To prove to the raccoon that it could be done" to the bottom. While we're editing the screen, there are a couple of buttons that we don't need so highlight them and delete them. In particular, there's a "recording" icon and a "next" icon. Move the speaker icon to balance your screen.
We're all set. Turn off the editing mode and move back to the first page with the navigation button and your grid is ready for testing.
Now, everyone can be a multimedia author and the speech synthesis in Clicker 5 is even better.
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