Remember the fun you had as a kid reading those choose your own adventure stories? Here is a Classroom Suite® template that enables you and your students to create your own!
I developed this template while working on the Mayan Jungle Adventure story. The basic idea was to build a story structure where multiple branch points could lead to many different outcomes.
But I also wanted the template to have some flexibility, so that every story line did not have to be the same number of pages long.
The problem is, if the structure had that flexibility, it could not be entirely predetermined. The answer was to set up individual page templates, duplicate them as needed from Sort Pages, and move the duplicated page templates into position.
The Choose Your Adventure Template has three basic page templates. They are:
- Pages with two buttons to let a student choose where to go next
- Outcome pages that let the reader start over or quit, and
- Next only pages to use as transitions to the next choice point.
Then each of these three basic page types needed to have a version with a Play Movie button, one for Play IntelliMation®, one that plays a sound, and one that has no added effects. That makes twelve story page templates to choose from in building your adventure story. There are also some specialized pages, including the cover page, The End page, and a Credits page.
All the necessary buttons, page actions, and a text box are in place on the template pages. To build a story, you duplicate one of the template pages, move it into position, and then add an image, text, and any needed multimedia.
You also need to set links for all the choice buttons so that they will jump to specific pages and continue that story line.
You can build quite complex stories, yet the custom overlay for this template is quite simple. There is a forward arrow, two choice buttons, a read out button, and buttons for movies, animation, and sound.
No matter what story structure you set up, the same overlay will work for navigation. See the Special Needs Access section on the System Reqs page for information on controlling the Classroom Suite version from PRC devices.
Using the template is fairly easy, but I have written a short step by step tutorial to make it easier still. Besides walking you through creating an activity with the Choose Your Adventure Template, the tutorial includes strategies for working out a good story line. There is also a section on how to use a two point IntelliMation to create virtual reality effects, such as moving into a photo image!
Download both the template and the tutorial, and get started doing some exciting reading activities. Just think of the possibilities!
You might set up teams of students to each write and illustrate one page, perhaps with their own artwork scanned in. You could set up a simulation of some real life situation, such as shopping or going to the zoo. You might do a time machine epic, such as visiting ancient Egypt, or take a virtual trip to outer space and tour the planets.
Or, you could just do a wild and exciting fiction story like Mayan Jungle Adventure. Whatever story idea you come up with, this template will make it much easier to get your saga all ready to enjoy!
Applications needed: IntelliTools Classroom Suite, Acrobat Reader.
Subject areas: Reading, Writing.
Level: Author
Downloads-Activities
Printable
AdventureTemplateTutorial.pdf (73.0 KB) Printable tutorial for the Choose Your Adventure Template. Acrobat Reader.
Adventure Template Tutorial Online Online version of the tutorial for the Choose Your Adventure Template, ready to present to groups.
Classroom Suite
AdventureTemplateABS.zip (4.5 MB) Choose Your Adventure Template in Classroom Suite v.3 or later. Custom IntelliKeys overlay is attached.
Hi Ann
Thank you for your creative work.
Finding materials which are age appropriate for a young teen has been hard, but
your books work quite well.
I’ve tried to read a few online books on my iPad2, including the Mayan and Little Toot books.
I’ve found that the sounds on each page of the online book don’t play, but the movie with sounds play fine.
Any ideas on how to hear the title being read along with the other sounds?
Another question is whether the text from the book can be set to be read aloud to a child.
We have been using the Classroom Suite books on our other computer for your books
Haven’t had time to check out if it’s possible to install Classoom Suite on the iPad2 yet.
Do you know if CS can run on iPad2?
Thanks for your great ideas and helpful hints.
Best to you
Jeanne Sterken
June 14, 2011 @ 9:04 amWI
Jeanne,
ICS For iPad?—-I just looked on the IntelliTools web site, and as of today, June 14, 2011, I don’t see any mention of a version for iPad. I imagine writing an iPad version for a set of applications as complex as Classroom Suite would be a major undertaking. Try emailing tech support and asking this question. If enough people are interested, that might make it more likely they would develop an iPad vesion.
Read-out for online books?—This could be something to set in the System Preferences or in the browser prefernces, but will differ depending on your platform, browser, and OS version. For example, on a Mac running OSX, it’s in System Preferences–>Speech. You can check a box to read out selected text, and set a key to make toggle read/stop reading. You then could use those two settings with two switches, or a switch with multiple options.
I don’t see a setting like that in XP, but there is a text-to-voice add-on for Firefox on XP. I don’t have an iPad, so I don’t now what is available in that system, but I’m guessing it’s like Mac. If you find ways to get the books to read out on XP, I’d be interested!
Sounds don’t play, but movies do—-This is a new problem, and one I can’t solve. The sounds are part of the movies, so if the movie plays at all (i.e., QuickTime is installed and working) then you hear the sounds. The page sounds where there is no movie are embedded mp3 sounds, and the html code for that is standard. It’s working on Mac using Safari or FireFox as the browser. It worked up until recently on Windows Explorer and FireFox on Windows. But something in a recent upgrade, probably to Windows Media Player (used by the browsers), has caused a problem. My older (ver 8?) Windows Explorer wouldn’t play the sounds until I re-installed a newer WMP plug-in, though newer Explorer versions still played sounds. But the plug-in for Firefox doesn’t work anymore.
Which browser were you using? Was it on iPad? Maybe there is a similar problem there. I just have to hope newer plug-ins get written so this old standard piece of code works again!
–Ann
June 14, 2011 @ 6:13 pm