'Visual Almanac' announced by Apple



Author: 

Date: September, 1989

Keywords: multimedia education visial almanac

Text:
BOSTON -- Educators and students soon will be able to experiment with
how to access, manipulate and communicate an array of visual, written
and auditory information contained in the ''Visual Almanac,''
introduced Aug. 9 by Apple Computer Inc. at MacWorld Boston '89.
The Visual Almanac is an interactive multimedia demonstration kit that
combines videodisc and the Macintosh personal computer with HyperCard. 
It is an outgrowth of two years of research with children and educators
by Apple's multimedia lab to determine how interactive technologies can
best create multi-sensory environments that address different learning
styles.
Although the Visual Almanac will not be a commercial product, it will
be made available as a grant to both educators and education software
developers this fall.
''We have already seen the excitement in teachers when they start to
use the Visual Almanac and see for themselves how multimedia provides
them with flexibility in the classroom in ways that was never before
possible,'' said Kristina Hooper, director of Apple's multimedia lab.
''For example, with the Visual Almanac, a teacher can easily
demonstrate how physics principles are at work in the kitchen or on the
playground.  The dynamic quality of multimedia is like having the
freedom to take field trips all the time -- without actually leaving
the classroom.  It also lets teachers reorganize materials for custom
presentations that fit into local curricula.
''Researchers have known for years that people learn best when they can
compare, contrast and interact with ideas and facts and they're also
more likely to retain information if they can access and communicate it
their own way,'' Hooper said.
''This technology gives teachers a powerful and practical learning
environment to take advantage of these concepts in a way they couldn't
before.  With the  Visual Almanac students and teachers can easily
browse through data, organize it to create meaningful information, and
communicate their discoveries in different forms, whether it's a moving
picture, a graph or a speech by a famous person.''
Apple chose the framework of an almanac for this project because it
describes the rich and varied content of the real world.  Like the real
world, it is also open-ended, which means there is more than just one
way to use it.  
The overall result is to let students discover for themselves that they
live in an interconnected world. Unlike textbooks and some of the more
traditional educational delivery systems, the Visual Almanac lets
students experience and interact with the facts to better understand
the world and their place in it.
 
How it works
 The Visual Almanac is divided into three sections: Activities,
Collections and Composition Workspace.  The 14 ''Activities'' are
prepared demonstrations of useful, curriculum-related content areas and
basic teaching principles intended to model how the Almanac can be used
by teachers or software developers.  
For example, the section ''Playground Physics'' uses familiar objects
like the merry-go-round, teeter-totter and swing to help students
understand some basic physics concepts and better appreciate that
science is more than just rules and formulas.
In the ''Collections'' section, a user can view or hear more than 7,000
objects divided into 10 categories of visual images and two categories
of sounds.  Unlike an encyclopedia, which attempts to be complete in
chosen subject areas, the Almanac aims to cover a breadth rather than a
depth of topics, including the solar system,  animals and plants,
history, daily life, world cultures and studies in time.
The third major section of Visual Almanac is its ''Composition
Workspace,'' where users can do research and create reports
electronically.
Availability
The Visual Almanac will be made available this fall to a limited number
of educators and education software developers via a grant from Apple
Computer.  The purpose of the grant is to enable educators and students
to experiment with the Visual Almanac and to develop exemplary models
that illustrate the effective use of multimedia technology and
information in education.  
Details of the grant will be announced this fall.  Educators and
developers can obtain additional information about the Visual Almanac
grant by writing to:
 
     Visual Almanac Grant
     20525 Mariani Ave.
     M/S 27-SF
     Cupertino, Calif. 95014

Copyright © september, 1989 by Date: September, 1989