ConnSENSE Review: Hollywood High

Rarely do you find an exciting software program that is motivating for students and is very inexpensive. Hollywood High, published by Scholastic is that type of software program. Hollywood High is a multimedia program that allows students to script out a play. It’s an innovative, create-your-own show with 12 characters, 32 teenage hangout scenes, and a great collection of actions that bring the characters to life. Individuals can create animated multimedia productions about their life, their best friends, or their favorite places.

The program opens, allowing the students to pick the scene and their characters. The characters can be customized by changing their name, role, and hobby. Students can also change their characters emotions by having them go from happy, mischievous, to confused or reflective. There are a total of 20 emotions that can be assigned to the characters.

When the students are ready to write they will go to the script button and begin adding text to their characters. There is text to speech built into the program so the characters will speak the dialog the students give them. It's also a great way for students to hear or listen to what they write. It's great when it comes to editing because students hear if they typed in something grammatically incorrect or if they omitted punctuation. Each character has a set of about 14 actions that can be assigned to them from waving excitedly, falling asleep and snoring, to throwing a tantrum or writing in a notebook.

The tools palette allow students to add sound effects from categories such as animals, cartoons and sci-fi, to transportation or musical themes. Embedded into the program is an idea machine. When the students go to the idea machine they have the ability to be assisted with a story starter, which will be based upon the scene they choose, characters, roles and hobbies. So for those students who just don’t’ know where to begin they can utilize that support. Within the idea machine is also a plot twist which will throw an unexpected direction to the story. And the final button in the idea machine is the dialogue button, which will randomly generate dialogue messages for the character selected.

When the play is finished the students can click on the theater button and their entire play will begin to run. The sound effects will be there along with any action or movement the students gave the characters and it will display a line of text at a time as the characters speak. The script itself can be printed out in hard copy so students could create plays for other students, then have the different groups act them out. It's a fun motivating way to develop creative thinking, communication, and writing skills. It's also a great program to use with students to explore appropriate social behavior, having them script out different scenarios. Some teachers have used it to explore issues that students sometimes don't want to discuss, such as the fight that broke out on the playground. Just so you don't think this is for students only, I have seen staff members script out scenarios for their next staff meeting and also use it for their next at home dinner party.

This is definitely a software program you want to add to your writing station.