FlashNHistory
 
Carole Stathem - super sales person for Asymetrix
These two workbooks started with the basics and took the user to the application level. It was PowerPoint on steroids. It was based on a page concept which included a background so as the objects took up more memory, the background was always a way to add more to a page. For example 26 objects like the letters of the alphabet with code may tax the memory and limit what you were doing with the letters. The action with the letter could be on the front. Video clips were easy to include but the size may have been too much for the foreground that you could always have the background. It was easy to go from author to reader mode by hitting the F3 key on the keyboard to toggle that action. In addition to the program the Asymetrix folks included a library of pre-coded activities that were easy to convert to your own use.
On the example from the library this one was coded to be called the "Spread of Christianity."Once the student clicked on the terms they got a line where they dropped it on the correct term. So 1. Parables would link up with c. Short stories with moral lessons. When the "Grade me" button is clicked a green line is drawn for the matched pairs. Click the "Show answers" and all the terms are matched up and lines linking each correct answer.
The Ten Question Quiz
This application let students take a quiz and record the information into a log file on the computer network. This invention really made life easier and the instructor had an idea of what the students had learned. Students would click the buttons to make the questions appear and then they would click the drop-down menu and select the correct answer. As I became more savvy, a request file would tell the student to answer a question they forgot to answer. So when they clicked the button "Grade Answers" they would see their score but it would also create and save the following information in the save log file. So, now I had an assistant to grade my test. The text fields you see at the bottom would be the test name
1. Map Test - would be the log file where all the information from entire classes would be stored
2. "nbsmj" would be the students name.
3. The blank field would be the students score.
4. The test name
5. Date taken was fielded by the computer along with the last field.
6. Time taken.
Now, I had a document to record in the grade book and as grade went on line I recorded these results in no time!
So, what's the answer to the question showing?
longitude!
Crossword Puzzle - Roman leaders
Setup page for the Concentration Game.
Start out simple and let it grow. Notice, the pairs have the same color, so matching would be no problem. Now, questions could match up with pictures or text. Stephen Hustedde was the brains behind this code. Once you got out of author mode, the blocks would go to random locations on the board. Stephen had a puzzle behind the blocks but as time went by we did away with the puzzle.
By using the Ask and Request question format this is what we created.
Classroom Jeopardy
Classroom Jeopardy - Setup for teams
Holding down the SHIFT and CTRL keys on the keyboard and left clicking the different boxes another game could be created. Now, we had the content by the horns. This became a review game between two students or hooking up to the data projector we could engage the whole class. The administration tried to pull a fast one on us by over loading the classroom with students. One year we had a class of 35 students. We did not have 35 computers or even 18 computers, we had 14 computers so each computer  had 2, 3, or 4 students playing the Jeopardy Game. We kept adding to the code to improve feedback to students for their answers. The game could also include pictures like this one of the Parthenon. As time went by we included a bonus round for those groups who finished ahead of the others.
Feedback showing correct answer plus total points for the question.
Just when you think it can't get any better, someone comes along with  something better. I asked Stephen Hustedde if he had a way to review the inventors in world history. In the return email he sent me the GIFT of a lifetime. I call it
"Stephen's Gift To Educators."
I have this posted on teachers pay teachers. The Wheel of Fortune.
Stephen's Gift to Education
Wheel of Rome
Four players can play. Terms come from your vocabulary. See the setup page. Think about how many times you could reuse this program for other chapters in a world history book. I thought the students were having fun and never saw this much interaction in a class room. They were still focused on the content but now they were checking outr answers from the book and having conversations about the information. Stephen came up with a leaderboard that really added a new element. Who could drag and drop the terms to the correct spot - the fastest. Let me have another try to be at the top of the leaderboard. It was the day time version of the 1980's arcade. This was a game changer in education. So, after a night of getting a program ready we would push out to each computer and put an icon on the desktop. Students  came to class and started to check out the desktop to see what they would  be doing.

There were still lectures and discussions and films but the interaction with the computer was something I've never seen in education. Maybe it was the spinning of the wheel that hypnotized them to become interested in what they were studying. At home the setup page is where the process started. Click the "Add New Puzzle" button. A dialogue box would let you enter the term, then another dialogue button would let you enter the definition of the term. After a while, the students would come in asking what they would do today.
Roman Leaders

Famous Greeks
This was a drag and drop program. There were three pages of moving the cartoon figures to the correct location. Students would use their books and worksheets to record the lesson.
Greek Map
It's pretty plain Jane but with this handout students could mouse over each square to find out what it was to fill-in their map. A search and find mission. On the next page was a timed test to see how fast they could drag the locations to the correct place.
Next, at the computer students would practice to see how fast they could drag and drop the locations. Again, Stephen Hustedde put in motion "the challenge" competition between students. On the next page was the leader board. With a little code the names would rearrange to put who ever had the highest score in the # 1 spot. I will never see this competition in the classroom. Now, when they left class they truly had a sense of accomplishment.
The more the students strived the harder Stephen and I worked to bring more into the learning solution.
Greek Vocabulary
Holding down the SHIFT and CTRL keys on the keyboard and left clicking the different boxes another term could be created. We let the students create their own vocabulary page. Once they entered the term another dialogue box would let them enter the definition to the term. We even used the Microsoft Agents to do the speaking the definition of the box.
Microsoft Agents
Which Agent?
What action?
Download Roman Football
Taking all that Stephen Hustedde gave me and taught me I was able to design this little football game. To edit a question - Use the same Hold down the SHIFT and CTRL keys on the keyboard and RIGHT click the football. The program here is all about the Roman Empire. Don't know the answers - Hold down the SHIFT and CTRL keys on the keyboard and RIGHT click the print button. You need fifty questions to have this game as yours.
A fill in the blank question - Augustus
The Answer and the ball moves 20 yards. You play until you miss a question. Ball changes hands when a person misses a question or gets a Touchdown!
A Multiple Choice question - less yardage - easier to pick the correct answer!
Only ten yards on a Multiple Choice Question - If the student got it right the letter with a "R" or "P" became unable to pick again.
I got out of education for 6 months to work for Duke Energy in Charlotte, N.C. We helped design a program using Toolbook to explain how the new cashier's program worked written in Visual Basic. A team of 6 people completed this project. This was the heyday of Toolbook in the commercial world. George Bush would be elected and all this growth would stop. All of this was before 9/11/01. At the Wachovia building we had a drill to exit the building. Little did we know that this is what would happen in the towers at the World Trade Center in New York. Even while I worked here Stephen was still feeding me ideas for an animation to start our program at Duke.  
Getting Outside Help from AmSouth Bank
About 140 students got to benefit from this cash infusion. The program we presented was called the "Learning Game" AmSouth gave us 8,094 dollars. It made all the difference in buying computers and a phone line for the classroom to bring in the Internet. We hired Rob Ballard to setup our classroom with a server and five computers. The networking made all the difference in rolling out the toolbook programs. Rob also came up with the code to save all the student's test into a log file. Hey, No grading quizzes.

In 1992 we were looking for programs that would do more than Ami-Pro and Microsoft Word. Even at this time most of the staff was still using Word Perfect which in 2018 has gone out of style. Microsoft got their lunch when they bundled more products in Microsoft Office. A few schools were using Visual Basic but we kept looking because we did not want to learn how to program. Along with the librarian, Jerri Gurley we chose and purchased Asymetrix Toolbook Multi-Media. 


We were lost but after calling the Asymetrix Company out in Seattle, Washington we became familiar with Carole Statham, who gave us a bunch of other people making projects with the Toolbook software. There was even a list serve where you could post problems and interesting persons would give you answers. We bought the notebooks filled the how to work the tools to develop the program. Most of it was too easy to attract any students, but it was a start. I had no idea of what we were getting in but I knew we wanted something students could interact with. At this point in, and because of the librarian's idea we could buy the 600 dollar software like we were buying a book and so we got a bunch at the time who knew how helpful they would be in making fun stuff for students. The teacher purchased the two workbooks below and took a 700 dollar program in Atlanta for three days. The school system did not pay for these.
It's 1996. While teaching at Gordon Central, Gene Joy's sister brought in the above CD-ROM for the class to see. We were studying the impact of Napoleon in a world history class. The creative people at Dorling Kindersley did some amazing animations. They took Stephen Biesty's drawings of an 18 hundreds British warship and animated them. Our favorites were the amputation and the men seating at the head of the ship. We used the CD as a way to show students, but as time went by we bought more to let the students play with it. Some would come back after class to play with it. It was a great very engaging because after playing the animations in different parts of the ship they would see an animation of the stowaway leaving the scene. Clicking the screen they would get a page with the stowaway's picture and how many more times they would have to catch him 
Take a longer look
So, once they got this page the hunt was on. What a way to motivate students! When all 10 sightings were filled in, users had to locate him in the room to have the guards arrest him. We got in touch to DK to get the answer. I was tickled to see the joy in students learning this way. Take a look.
Take a look
The other software we found was the above Castle Explorer by Dorling Kindersley, who once again took Stephen Biesty's drawing of a castle and turned it into a learning game. This game was similar to the Stowaway game. There were no animations, so you entered the castle as a spy (girls had the maiden outfit ) (guys had the knight outfit) - You received a spy chest where you had to locate four items around the castle, 5 pieces of a map, and answer several questions that were scene specific. The students also got to collect gold coins by clicking on them as they went into the spy chess.
Students also got to go in 3_D rooms where they could explore for more map pieces. Some times they were confronted by the people of the room and get sent to the dungeon. That's where the gold coins came in to pay off the guard of the dungeon.
Take a Look
The characters in the 3-D rooms would sometimes ask you a question like the one above and if you got the answer incorrect you went to the dungeon.
The best recommendation from Carole Statham was Stephen Hustedde's book, Developing with Asymetrix Toolbook 1996. After contacting Stephen, he shared ideas from his nursing program from Arizona State. This computer file was loaded with tons of examples that were converted into World History programs.
A simple test with no grading - Longitude is the answer!
Most of the above quizzes had log files that looked something like this. This file was made possible with the help of Rob Ballard. This code was put in the "Grade Answers" button.
    clear sysError
fileName="C:\Windows\Desktop\Maptest.txt"
        openFile fileName
        if sysError is not null then
        createFile fileName
        end if
        logEntry=text of recordfield "title" & "," & text of recordfield "name" \
          & "," & text of recordfield "date" & "," & text of recordfield "time" \
          & "," & text of recordfield "score" & CRLF
        writeFile logEntry to fileName
        closeFile FileName
        forward
    send exit
end       

Puzzle Activity - Students worked in two's to answer these questions. Books were now stored in the classroom. If a student needed to study they could check out a book. All these activities were on-line for the students.
These are the files Stephen Hustedde helped me to create these applications. The Crossword puzzle - students would click a number button. A request file would appear with a question and a answer blank. After looking up the answer the two person group would enter JuliusCaesar with no spacing and click "OK." If the answer was correct the yellow boxes beside #11. would show the text "JuliusCaesar" and Caesar's picture in the grey box. As you might have guessed, this activity changed the nature of the instructor job. Now, the instructor would be a helper and a manager as well as a creator of activities.
Setup Page for a Concentration Game
As time went by, Stephen came up with a cool way to setup questions in Toolbook. Back then, the objects could contain code, so the teacher could click the object with a LEFT click while holding down the SHIFT and CTRL keys on the keyboard. See the question format in the diagram below.
Published in 1999, As the users clicked the numbers - a clip was played from the Indiana  Jones movie "The Last Crusade". Indy's Dad had been shot by the bad guy, so Jones had to cross the "Leap of Faith" bridge in order to save his Dad(Sean Connery).
"You must hurry, Indy"
"It's a leap of faith"
"I'm through"
"You must believe , boy, you must"
"It's impossible"
There were 11 clips from the movie. This was too cool back in 1989 when the movie was made. 
If the students got the wrong answer from one of the Ask or Request questions about the early history of man then the Jones character fell down the side of the cliff and to continue they had to hit the "Start Over" button. As  Jones fell we played the sound clip from the previous challenge. Crossing over the bridge made of rocks that spelled God. Later, Stephen Hustedde helped me make a program where we put the chapter vocabulary along with a clue and the vocabulary term appeared in the rocks. We then turned it into a game between two teams of students 
AfterEffects - Jones and the Leap of Faith
I am including the link to remind those who did not see it. Recreation or 

Indiana Jones INVISIBLE BRIDGE Tutorial | Miniature model & After Effects!
50 points for Art Question
Need a new question? Setup for another game? We could do it without re-inventing the wheel. The answer key was printed out when the teacher held down the SHIFT and CTRL keys on the keyboard and RIGHT CLICKED the PRINT button.
The Wheel of Fortune
This is a zip file containing Neuron which needs to be installed first before running the program below. When extracting the zip file, keep the sound files in the same extracted folder.
This still works on your compuiter!
Wheel of Rome - Stephen's Gift To Education
Setup Page For Wheel of Fortune
Roman Leaders - This game let the students mouseover the leaders which would reveal a clue. Then they would click the blue button to the correct leader. Students could check their progress to see how many they got right by clicking the "Check Answers" button.
Greek Map Challenge
The Greek Map Leader Board
Stephen's Products At Tricalico
A Day of Celebration for Students - Money for Computers
Mr. George Alexander Made it happen!
George Alexander
The job I was applying for was a history teacher with wrestling experience. I gave Mr. Alexander a lot of the information from above. The whole interview changed on the spot. Now, they wanted a person to teach programming. What a lucky shot. This was the most supportive principal I ever had in all my years of education. In creating all the content for class I would bring my own tower and data projector to class. Before I know it the librarian comes to me with a laptop in size a nice carrying case. She simply said Mr. Alexander wanted you to start using this. I was shocked! Never in all my years has this happened before. The next thing I know my classroom had a data projector mounted on the ceiling. Before I was able to get settled in with that here comes a Smart Board. I only wish I had met Mr. Alexander earlier in my career.
The next thing I know, I'm working with a group of teachers who plan to teach a laptop program to one group of students. The lucky 16 students got to carry around a laptop for all their classes. Hot spots were installed so they could get the Internet at any place in the building.
The programming class did a little of Visual Basic before converting to Toolbook. As time went by it changed over to Flash. Mr. Alexander purchased all these for that class. We never used books for that class either.
Mr. Alexander ask me along with Olivia Steele to teach teachers at Etowah the basics of technology. Olivia did the teaching, I just went around and helped. We had a booklet from the state to cover the basics. Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were the main stay of their learning. It was really just an introduction but it got many started with using PowerPoint as a way to interact with the students. Meanwhile, I was put in charge of the school website. We used FrontPage to put up our site. It started out slow but the goal was to linkup an instructor's picture with their own website. Some of the teachers refused to be in the yearbook so I went and found them on my off period and snapped them. The guys in the automotive and shop were notorious for being hard to find. Before long, teachers wanted to change out the school photograph with a glamor shot. It was fun to know all the people in the school.
Mr. Alexander spices up Greek Philosopher Day at Walton High School
Mr. Alexander was a teacher back in day at one of the most successful high schools in the state, Walton High School. Walton was a charter school in Cobb County so they were always on the next best thing. Neither of by academic teams, Gordon Central or Etowah were able to beat them at academic tournaments. Tons of smart students came from there. George was part of the force to start the Advanced Placement program at Walton. So, adding to one's education was always in his background. He helped me to become an advanced placement teacher in A.P. Government and later in A.P. European History.