SBEC Standard #9

Multimedia

Reflection:

However, it is not always used appropriately. As a Technology Applications teacher, one of my most important goals is to teach the "proper tool at the proper time for the proper task".

• When is delivery through multimedia appropriate?
• What are the guiding principles for determining appropriateness?
• What constraints exist that would make multimedia inappropriate? Physical? Technological? Mental?
• How do the principles learned in other areas of Technology Applications, such as layout, design, and learning principles, affect the presentation?

All of these questions must be considered when performing this type of development.

The promise of multimedia is its ability to simultaneously address multiple learning and information assimilation styles. Kinetic, aural, and visual orientations are all present and can be used to provide a learning/assimilating thread. By emphasizing the best of each portion of the Technology Applications spectrum in a single component, a manageable and effective presentation can be created.

Caption #5 - Caption #7 - Caption #9

Caption 5

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Rationale:

The presentation is a web page, focused on presenting the characters of the show in an easy-to-use format. Because of the show's content (death, dying, and conflict during life), plots are centered around conflict and variations of character involvement. This site serves as a simple reference for where the characters start out, rather than having to discover the depth of the characters through continually watching it....more like a reference to soap opera characters.

It uses neutral colors, primarily grey and black. Since the underlying theme of the show is death, these colors seemed appropriate for Western audiences. It is a frameset, with the left navigation bar composed of three level, rollover images created with Macromedia Fireworks. The embedded video and audio were edited using Sound Forge Visual Studio from Sonic Foundry, exported to RealAudio formats to minimize bandwidth usage and storage space. All images were taken from the HBO site, edited to conform to a standard size. The written content was created based on my impressions and understanding of the characters.

As many interactive features as possible were integrated into the site, with the user having complete control over the audio (which starts automatically on page load), and video playback. Also, the roll overs alternate between black marble, blue marble, and solid black to indicate off, mouse over, and selected states.

Also, as a solid enemy of framesets, this project gave me a chance to experiment more with this type of web page and integrate it into a delivery format that was usable and consistent. 

Implications for Future:

Also, I learned how to handle framesets within Adobe GoLive and Macromedia Dreamweaver and have a better understanding of how this can be taught to beginner HTML users.

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Caption 7

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I included this piece because I had to create it entirely from scratch. I read the poem, found the images, made modifications as needed, and combined the animation into a whole. Also, the piece was a cross-discipline creation, which is one of the most powerful uses of technology in education. Most companies and publishers focus on the use of technology for technology's sake, not necessarily to the creation of a better teaching tool within a specific subject. Ozymandias was built to prove that a better understanding of a poem and its mood could be delivered using a technology tool, but without the total subjugation of the poem.

Implications for Future:

I would like to create more elements like this one that enhance the basic value in a learning element by using technology.

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Caption 9

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Best Work: The opening slash page, the soccer ball, is the closest to real-life emotion that I have come with an animation. It interacts with its surroundings and catches our attention with its personality and "nervous" behavior.

This piece was the most complex that I had ever created. Embedded video is a new feature of Flash MX and the Flash 6 Player; this type of activity previously required that the "movie" be rendered as a movie clip within Flash, reducing control and bit depth of the movie considerably. Each of the pictures was either downloaded from the Internet or scanned in at 1200 dpi, then modified to fit into the Flash presentation. The movie was an interesting download from the an English Soccer site. The soundtrack was edited from 2 "stand" songs sung by British soccer fans. The quality is relatively poor, but what do you expect from a bunch of drunk Englishmen?

Implications for Future:

While the newer features of the Flash MX environment are fun to play with, this assignment showed me some of the difficulties that can be encountered and should be avoided. There are many uses for scrolling frames and video within a Flash animation; most students will have seen examples of this with the older versions of Flash. The new version reduces the amount of development time needed to create these animations, but, because of their high software requirements, increases the danger that no one will have the hardware to see it.

For image creation and development, this was excellent practice on scanning, shaping, and resizing. Tedious, but a requirement for getting better at it.

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