Submitted by:
Neill Kramer
President
CyberPuppy Software, Inc.
74 Arvine Heights
Rochester, NY 14611 USA
v: (716) 436-9504
f: (716) 436-2783
e: nxkgsh@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Categories:
Education, K12
Keywords:
Creation of new ideas, products, or services
Supporting Documentation (contact author for more information):
Software; Documentation; Computer graphic images, such as GIF files
The Story:
Our company, CyberPuppy Software, Inc., is developing authoring software for the K-12 market (see product description below). While the initial platform for the product is Macintosh computers, we also intend to offer a Windows version. We see a need for connectivity among our potential users, as already on the Internet stories and artwork is shared through KidLink and other vehicles. We envision offering a “send” command within our application, so users can create stories – with pictures, sounds, and text – and then send them to the Internet. Conversion of the files would take place automatically, and the same would be true for receiving stories from the Net.
The following is our product description:
S t o r y w a r e
A Personalized Multimedia Software Application
Storyware is designed to be the most sophisticated authoring tool for children available (product release is scheduled for Summer ’93). Major features of the application include: treasure chests of high quality, photographic images; a driver for the Kodak Photo CD; sound recording with Apple Computer’s built-in microphone; a speech synthesizer that will capture, out loud, the words a storyteller has typed; saving and playing stories as QuickTime movies; painting tools; and cookie-cutter technology (special cut and paste tools that are custom designed for ease of use).
The Strong Museum, an internationally recognized collection of dolls, toys, and American artifacts in Rochester, New York, several archive houses, and an encyclopedia company are reviewing licensing proposals to provide CyberPuppy Software with digitized replicas of their objects and/or images for Storyware. A complete guide to each of the items will be provided in the manual. A brief description of each item will also appear on-screen. Learners will be able to access hundreds of priceless images and merge them with their own photographs from a Kodak Photo CD.
Each story will be composed of full-screen frames. These can easily be re-ordered and run with a click of the mouse.
By making the software an authoring tool, awareness of how stories are formed will filter into the learner’s experience as he or she explores our treasure chests of imagery.
Storyware is an ideal curriculum enhancement tool. It builds on social studies, history, English, and writing, as well as art and computer graphics skills. Stories can be told and memories can be saved in entirely new ways.