Children become young journalists in the award-winning Writers' Workshop. Children develop factual and creative writing skills in a stimulating environment. Build a face and then write a story about your character. Join the Newsgroup where a bank of video shorts, photos, and reporting assignments inspire young writers to create their own sound-track scripts. Write captions, broadcasts, and reports for newspapers and magazines. Research news stories and read from a teleprompter. Children feel like professional journalists while they learn to capture their audience's attention with concise reporting.

Writer's Block taps into childrens' creativity as it prompts them to script and record interviews, advertisements, and plays. They also learn to write dialog and use descriptive language to create magazine-style photo stories, profiles, and biographies. The program is designed so that students can move through their projects intuitively. There's library of study points guide them along the way and projects can even be saved on the web. There's plenty of support materials for teachers and the program switches to French, Spanish, or German at the click of a mouse. All products are automatically saved as web pages for easy posting on the internet.

· Bank of writing assignments, video shorts, and photos

· Radio, newspaper, and magazine writing activities

· Helpful tips for young writers

· Runs in English, French, Spanish, German

· Lots of classroom support materials included

Minimum system requirements:

PC: Pentium, 16 Mb RAM, 256 Color, 640x480, Win 3.11+, 4X CD

Radio Activity

In Radio activity you become a journalist for a radio news program. You must write factual and fictional features for broadcast on a variety of topics. Select your subject and get your briefing. Accepting the brief will take you to the multimedia news room, where you can write your radio piece and record it. We have included a teleprompter with three speeds, so you can experience what it's like to be a real reporter!

Write On

In Write on you can compose an article for either a newspaper or a magazine. First you choose one of the eight headlines. This will take you to the sub-menu, where you can narrow your choice. After the briefing you write the article. Use the Library for background information and images, or surf the internet for new information.

Face Value

In Face value you must choose a photograph and then write a story about the character you have chosen. When you click on one of the eleven pictures you will be given a brief. Remember a picture is worth a thousand words, so you can be as imaginative as you like. You can save your document at anytime as an HTML document and post it on the internet.

I Site

I site is an autobiography writing exercise. Clicking on the pen icon will fire up the HTML editor so you can begin writing your memoirs immediately. If you don't want to write about yourself, then tackle a biography about someone famous. A biography is the story of someone's life and it can include important events or achievements in their life. Use the internet to research someone famous. You can write about whoever you want, but remember to make sure that it is interesting and not just a list of dates!

Photo Fit

In this activity you will create a face and then write a biography. You can select different types of eyes, skin, mouths and even noses! Once you have created a face you must then write about the character you have created. What do they do? How old are they? What is their personality like? All of the questions can be answered in your description.

Sound Bytes

In Sound bytes you get to write and record a radio story. Choose your subject, then get the briefing. Write and review your story before recording it. In order to help you we have provided a teleprompter which automatically scrolls the text while you read. You may save your text and audio to floppy disc or hard drive, enabling you to work on it at a later date.  This requires that your computer has a microphone.

Photo Copy

Photo copy lets you sequence pictures and write a magazine story. Clicking on the Photo copy button will allow you to choose one of five photo stories. Once you have accepted the brief you will be taken to the picture selection screen. Here you can choose up to eight images, from the twenty available, to make up your story. Chosen images can be moved around, sequenced, or deleted easily. Once you are satisfied with your choices you can begin writing by clicking on the pen icon. Choose the picture you wish to write about by clicking on it, then start writing. Clicking on the broadcast button when you have finished writing will allow you to show your work off in the broadcast screen. You can save your work at any time as an HTML document for easy posting to the internet.

Caption Writer

In Caption writer you have to write captions to match photos which could be published in a newspaper or magazine. First you must select which photo you would like to write the caption for. Once you have made your selection you are given a brief, which explains your task. After you have finished your caption you can publish your piece of work to see what it would look like in a magazine.

Minimum System Requirements