EDU 807 Spring 2018 - Week 5 - Hypercard Introduction - Group 3
Hosted on the Internet Archive, this video about Hypercard (26:50) is described as:
An introduction to Apple's Hypercard. Guests include Apple Fellow and Hypercard creator Bill Atkinson, Hypercard senior engineer Dan Winkler, author of "The Complete Hypercard Handbook" Danny Goodman, and Robert Stein, Publisher of Voyager Company. Demonstrations include Hypercard 1.0, Complete Car Cost Guide, Focal Point, Laserstacks, and National Galllery of Art. Originally broadcast in 1987. Copyright 1987 Stewart Cheifet Productions.
We are going to watch one segment of the video, both because I can't embed the media from the Internet Archive (and this segment was on YouTube) as well because you just got done doing lots of reading. Please view the video and respond to these questions:
- How is Hypercard described? Given the focus of computer-aided instructions in the 1980s, and the fact that this was pre-WWW, what was unique, interesting, useful, or engaging about this program?
- What potential purposes could Hypercard -- as a component of teaching and learning -- and why/how was it different from other programs?
- Though the video doesn't talk about it in particular, in what ways might this use of technology position teachers? In what ways might it position students?
- In short, who has power and agency as you look at the way technology is described?
Please offer at least two initial comments on the video, as well as two responses to your classmates. Despite the impulse to make comments on the clothing, hairstyles, and eyewear, please try (try!) to keep your comments focused on the content of the video.
icons on the left to see existing comments.
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This is amazing. Sorry Dr. Troy, I can’t help but to say that the pink polkadot shirt was my favorite:-)
To have an organizational structure designed how things are associated (wheels, eyes, etc) was very surprising to me since this was pre-WWW. Interesting to me that the hyperlinks provided both information and interaction between users—this seems to be a pre-collaborative tools function. I was considering what has really changed with the technological functions that we have today, and I was thinking that to use such a thing, one would really need to have specialized training, which would need to take place over a period of time, and yet today, much of our technologies are intuitive —which makes me wonder if they are really intuitive or if it is just that we have become more familiar with them.
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Glad you liked the fashion!
As you think about your comments here — especially related to the idea about specialized training — what, specifically, do you think that the developers of Hypercard were going for? What, specifically, were they trying to accomplish in terms of educational technology?
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After listening to the clip and seeing what they developed, I don’t believe that had education in mind when they created these cards. I think they were developing ways to store, link and retrieve information. Being that I was learning programming during the Pre-screen and monochrome PC era, the biggest aspect of programming was trying to get business task inefficiencies out of them. It was about doing things faster than by hand and that is what I saw and heard during the interview.
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I agree that the initial idea was business driven as much of tech is , because that is where the money is. However, through the video, you can see the excitement that they have for the tech and all the possibilities that they see if enhancing beyond just business.
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I agree with George here. I think because it was such a new technology, they likely had not thought of the affordances related to education. I think now as we look at it, we can identify such affordances—like possible collaboration or showing the relationship between items.
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I think some of the strongest educational uses of the cards were in the modifications of the scripting of the so-called buttons. These buttons were what we called pre-programmed subroutine modules and these guys created some easier to use programming language for their interactions with other button modules. This was the scripting language they were mentioning. Modifying this simplistic scripting language and watching the change in the reactions is a great way to learn and understand basic discrete (bit-wise)logic like “and, or, nor, if/then/else and not”.
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It is interesting to see how your mind goes to the programming side of education and learning. When I first saw this I automatically thought of those “Pick your own adventure” books that you can pick what happens next in the story. I think you are looking at the education of how to use the technology, and I am looking at the education that can be delivered by someone who knows how to use the tech. I like the different take on it.
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That’s a nice way of calling me different! I like it!
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Hummmm…..Teachers can use as an organizational and data storage tool. They could keep track of student grades, comments, notes and calendar items.
Students could use it to learn how to organize, identify and create subject mind maps with links …if the cards were able to show a certain level of big picture link connections between cards. Young kids could use it as story booking writing and reading. And of course they could use it for learning basic programming logic.
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What I saw as being unique for that time period was the use of utilizing modules to automatically create program scripting to for interactions with other modules/subroutines. This is one of the earliest forms of AI that I have ever seen. Think about it. Their program automatically wrote new software based on the interaction were wanted to see. We take for granted that when you click on an object and move it over that it will just move. But there is a tone of just basic logic and then code to make it happen. For instance, when you left click a spot on the screen and entire program must be running at that time to identify that the mouse clicked. And at the same time another program has been keeping track of the mouse location. And then another program is drawing and erasing the mouse every pixel it moves. And this is all just to click a mouse!!! Then there are a bunch of other code that needs to interact based on what these programs identify. In a sense these guys also in the beings of creating the first upper layer of software called an OS, operating system.
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Well the description of the technology is all about the power at the user’s fingertips. It is about how they can use, add and change the functions and data at will….and share the new card stacks and functions to public bulletin boards (Pre-Internet sharing). (interesting but I didn’t hear anything about sharing raw data)
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This reminds me of some of the literacy readings that we did for Dr. Mike and the importance of hyperlink learning and how different that is to traditional reading and learning. The design here seems very simple for us, but you can see how excited they are at the possibilities they forsee with the type of organization and flow that is being shown with Hypercard. Very cool flashback video.
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Thanks, Todd, for your comments on the video… to push your thinking a bit further…
What does Hypercard assume about the nature of learning? About reading? Writing? Viewing? Participating?
Pick up on that final question… In short, who has power and agency as you look at the way technology is described?
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I think the importance of hypertext documents like hypercard is that they put the power into the readers hands. When reading a normal document, you must follow the train of thought of the author. They are the guide and they have the power of what and when you get information. As a reader in a hypertext situation, you can choose the section that you want to follow next. You can jump to the discussion then, back to the methods, then to the conclusions if you wanted to. The reader has developed the power to choose their own path through the material.
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