An Overall Description of the Sophie demonstration

On the evening of October 2, 2006, Virginia Kuhn of USC came to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee to demonstrate a program that was released that very morning- Sophie. Sophie is an updated program of TK3, an interactive open source program that brings together iMovie and Powerpoint. With this combination, a user has the ability to format their presentation in either timeline or page form, allowing the presentation to be viewed as either a book or a film. Kuhn introduced the program as such, stressing the importance of linking digital visuals to text in the 21st century, and how the combination of these two can blend for an ideal format for dissertations, etc.
Kuhn first showed the group examples of projects created on TK3, as the program is very similar to the Sophie program, with a few exceptions. The first was a dissertation on Middle-Eastern Americans. By scanning the project, Kuhn demonstrated how TK3 has the ability to create a table of contents with hyperlinks, to take you to the desired section of the paper, as well as page turning options similar to those on Adobe Reader. The project displayed the program’s video capabilities, the option to create annotations for reference capabilities, a notebook window for readers to comment on the project being viewed, and a word finding option, just to display a view. This first project showed TK3/Sophie’s ability to create a project similar to something out of an interactive encyclopedia. Following, Kuhn tried displaying a storybook movie project someone had created, but because all the files were not present, the project was not viewable. Last was a film by John Berger, showing the program’s ability to either fullscreen a video, or surround it by text before viewing.
A video done by TK3 creator Bob Stein took over from here, demonstrating how Sophie worked. The short film demonstrated the program’s text field sizing abilities, the concept behind the timeline option in the program (the program can have an unlimited number of timelines and pages), the ability to scroll through the pages or go through them from the hyperlinks, and overall just how simple using the program was. The project created for the demo was a slideshow with Beethoven’s 5th symphony.
While the demonstration was informational in many ways, it moved incredibly too fast for the group, which is why Kuhn followed up with a full demonstration on how the program worked. It was at this point that many of the glitches of the program were pointed out to the group. However, Kuhn pointed out that because the program is so new, using it is a learning experience for everyone, including the creators, and any problems with the program should be addressed by sending an email to the help staff.
Overall, Sophie looks to be a promising new program that will hopefully one day replace Powerpoint and iMovie. While many questions and suggestions were shot out at the session, it was evident that the group was very excited about learning the new software, as seen from the hands-on workshop that followed the lecture. The program’s click and drag options make the program simple enough to use for most people, the only criticism most had was the program’s inability to open a new book by itself. The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee thanks Ms. Kuhn for her time this evening with the lecture and demonstration of Sophie.