This desire to guide students in the direction of a critical use of multimedia was the main impetus behind developing the template curriculum. Students may choose from a variety of topics, around which they then construct multimedia discussions and analyses of the chosen themes. I then interact with the students' projects, offering language correction, general commentary, and a point evaluation.
Students then return to the various topics to make corrections as they wish.
There have been two technical problems, stemming from students using Hyperstudio on Macs with too little memory and trying to load memory-taxing big graphics. My solution has been to coerce students into working on their portfolios in the Humanities Resource Center, where all of the Macs are adequate to the task. The Media-Viewer network has also worked well so far this semester. I've been able to print off digitized images, or link digitized videoclips to computer classroom exercises.