(Now operational.) Click the picture above to start the movie. Give it some time to start downloading and then click the play triangle. Clips courtesy of Adobe's Premiere tutorial. What classroom teaching ideas might be as outrageous as the skiing style of these skiers?	(Now operational.) Click the picture above for a live webcam shot of the WCU 90.5 FM radio station control room, which can be run on automatic from their computer, including the music and other audio files which run from the hard drive. Find the right link and listen to the radio station on your computer. Could you run an Internet radio station from your classroom teacher workstation?

What once seems beyond reach, even outrageous, becomes understood and do-able as others show the way.

Towards More Comprehensive Composition

A Computers in Education Chapter


A quick definition of literacy is the capacity to understand and create what goes on a page. For centuries those pages have increasingly been made of paper. Then, just since 1994 and the commercialization of the Internet, the Web brought an explosion of communication built on a new concept of a page, a web page which can contain all forms of media, not just text and image. How does the nature of thought and composition change in a culture increasingly driven by digital communication?

The image on the left reflects the array of choices for composing on paper, skills and concepts that have been around for thousands of years. Through this time we have learned that more effective reading requires more effective writing composition and vice versa. If understanding is the coin, reading and writing are its two sides.

How do we apply that basic understanding in an increasingly digital and globally networked world of information? The image on the right shows the major choices for literacy in the 21st century. In prior chapters, the growth of digital information challenged educators to expand their reading instruction by seeing that teaching and learning should include, as much as possible, the new digital forms from electronic slideshows to spreadsheets and digital still images and more. This chapter flips the coin over and accents more of where language arts education must go to make its instruction in composition with text (writing) instruction more relevant to the digital age. That is, improving the learners' ability to read the wide range of digital information better will also require the ability to "write" or compose using the wide range of digital skills of the Digital Palette. This full range of digital information could be called comprehensive composition. To many, the conceptual challenge in this transition from the cellulose (paper) palette to the digital palette is as great as the resource and skill challenge. Among the many options on the digital palette, digital video has become the poster child for the value of moving beyond text to include the rich range of digital communication. The web site youtube.com is perhaps its most visible publication center. Which of the digital options for composition on this palette has done the most to drive change in the nature of composition? Certainly no media has achieved greater cultural impact in the last fifty years than television and film. Motion pictures, video for short, and the value of video literacy is the focus of this chapter.

Digital convergence is the concept that as forms of communication, calculation and composition become digital they share a common standard. This standard  allows them to be merged or synthesized into higher level forms and designs. The emergence of the all digital World Wide Web, with its digital standards for multimedia, has transformed and expanded what composition will mean in the 21st century. The web is converting the word multimedia (many different media) into uni-media, a single standard for the integration of all media. In this chapter, the term comprehensive composition will also be used to refer to this web-based digital integration of all the major forms of media now commonly used in our culture. Comprehensive composition can integrate in one web page or several, these elements:  text, still images, audio/music, video, animation, virtual reality, electronic sensors and remote control and computer programming. Future new technologies may add to this list. All of these forms are already commonly found in some degree of mix in web pages all across the Internet. Though this chapter focuses on just the "headliner act" of cyberspace, video composition, video itself is a medley of text, movie, sound and still image media. Other chapters provide more detail about these other forms of digital media.

In a prior chapter, desktop publishing was explored, a technology that integrates text and still images on the same display page. Webtop publishing, e.g., web page servers, takes us far beyond just the still image. Cyberspace takes world culture to a new and much more powerful level of personal composition. It is my sense of things that this development is as big and as important as the jump from an oral culture to a literate culture was a few thousand years ago. This latest jump into global distribution of comprehensive composition has only been possible since about 1994 so it is very new.

Often we use the term multimedia to stand for this integration of media, but other synonyms can be found as well: linking, multimodal literacy, compound documents, and media integration. Multimedia is a topic heading at every grade level in the North Carolina Computer Literacy requirements. Too often though, multimedia or media literacy, has been about one side of the coin of understanding, the reading, use and critique of the work of others, not about empowering students, teachers and other learners to create and compose with new media. Whatever term we use, comprehensive composition's long term impact on composition, curriculum and schools will be profound.
 

Video Composition

For now, video will be the primary focus under our intellectual microscope for this chapter. Computer technology, aided by the Internet, has disconnected video from the VCR. That is, seeing video no longer requires stand-alone equipment such as a VCR or TV or even an antenna. It can also be done with computers and their networks. But there is an even more striking and important development. Not only can computer technology display, edit and play video, but it can integrate text, still images, and video within the same display space. Prior to this time separate display technologies, a book or magazine,  would have been required to display the text. A VCR or TV would have been needed to display the video. Now one technology does the text and video in the same frame. Play the video clip at the top of this page for an example. This merger of video and text documents in the same display is totally unprecedented in human history. Video can now become a dynamic part of every page or pages on any web site along with other forms of media.

As text publishing on the web moves rapidly to include video as a standard component, how will this impact the nature of writing and other language arts activities in the schools? The answer has not yet arrived. It may be that the newest teachers joining the professional ranks will have the most to say about about this emerging idea. It is time to begin thinking creatively about the future possibilities.

In focusing on video composition, it should be noted that our culture is undergoing one more transition of media technologies. Just as music's use of 33 1/3 records gave way to 45s, then to the digital formats of CDs and now to MP3s, now video is moving from analog to digital formats (DV for digital video) as well. Even television and radio are going digital. The TV industry is now required by Federal law to move along a government specified timeline from broadcast of analog video to the all digital high-definition and wide format television model. Television is not the only form of video display that is changing. The emerging digital standard for video in computers is a now format called MPEG4.

Analog Video

Analog video refers to old forms of electronic video storage commonly found in schools and homes today. This form can be recognized by the terms VHS, Beta, 8mm, Hi-8 and S-VHS. All of our university equipment that is currently available for student checkout no longer uses the older VHS analog format. Analog storage means that the magnetic storage of the electronic signals on videotape is done with a continuously changing wave analogous to the waves of light that are seen by the camera. Digital storage means that computer chip sensors in the camera convert light into the computer format of discrete periodic measurements that are converted into one's and zero's which are then electronically stored on the magnetic tape or digital chips.

Tutorial activities in the sidebar will require that you use digital video cameras to complete a short (two-minute) video composition project.

Digital Video (DV)

Digital video (DV) comes from cameras that store video digitally. These cameras and players are labelled DV or DVD systems. Though television screens display this video in the normal manner that fills the screen, this full-screen video creates enormous data files which thereby transmit slowly over the Internet using currently common slow speed standard modems, even 56KB modems. But even higher speed computer networks have trouble with transmitting the amount of data needed for full-screen video. Consquently, InternetII was designed as an experimental nationwide computer network to work out the opportunities and problems presented by a computer network that has the bandwidth or speed to handle full-screen video, but only a small percentage of university campuses now participate in this research.

Different solutions to video's problem with computer network speed are used individually or in combination. One approach is to send fewer than the standard 30 frames per second, maybe even 1 frame per second or slower. This leads to rather jerky looking web video. Other solutions include reducing screen size and the number of colors that are transmitted. This makes web video less realistic with harder to see details. But that is not the end of story. 

Programmers have created different digital video formats that go by the names of Real, AVI and Quicktime. 
 
 

Special operating system code must be added or installed on your hard drive to see web or computer-based video. Further, these companies are constantly improving the video display code, so that the video from a web site that works fine one day, may require an updated installation of this system code the next. Fortunately this system video code has been free so far. Also, the web sites generally tell you when updates are required and these updates can be downloaded from the web or found on CDs that contain digital video.

This means that readers of this chapter will find the DV experience much more challenging. If your computer cannot display the web video, it will say so and generally indicate where on the web the updates are located when this happens. However, even if you have the right DV resources in your operating system, the download speed of displaying the video may take so long that you will not want to proceed. If you are using a 56kb modem, expect difficulty with digital video. If there are difficulties with viewing the video, you will have to use a high-speed network more common to corporate, college and university campuses or use the broadband services provided by cable TV, satellite and telephone companies. If you want high speed access at home or in an area business, it will be necessary to step up to broadband service from a cable TV company, the phone company, or a wireless service. Effective satellite broadband service began to appear in 2002, with more competitors planning on entering the market in the months ahead. Broadband services are not yet running at a speed to deliver full-screen video over the Internet at this time, but enormous amounts of money and effort will be spent in the years ahead to make this a reality for nearly every home and business.

Web sites in the sidebar of this chapter will also provide additional examples of the integration of video and other forms of communication. To better understand what works and what doesn't with any form of composition, it is useful to look at the work of other composers.

The quantity of video and audio resources available through the Internet is significant. Many radio stations in the United States now also broadcast through the web as well as from their radio signals from their towers. Nearly every TV network maintains a web site which includes many videoclips from their shows. Even though their pages were free, they often charged a premium for video use. That is rapidly changing to free. Try these sites: CNN.com's video; CBS News video ; or Organic Broadcast Project's video channels. For more instructionally focused video, try searching for video in a content area with something like "free video archive math" or "free video math OR mathematics". But that is just the companies that have always been in this business; they have just added the option of web publishing. Today what is new is that anyone can quickly broadcast video to the globe with a digital camcorder, computer and video editing software and a web account. All versions of the Macintosh and Windows operating systems have shipped with free video editors for many years. Current versions of the Macintosh OS include iMovie, a great and easy to use video editor. The Windows OS comes with Movie Maker, a good video editor that was improved for the Vista version of Windows.

Video and audio do provide one very important feature to the often single computer in a school classroom. Audio and music allow the computer to serve whole class activities much better than text, image or video display. The use of the screen of a single computer for visual needs restricts its use to one student or a small group of students at best. Larger speakers attached to a computer are one of the least expensive items to add to a workstation if greater volume is needed.

Hundreds of new companies and experimenters are exploring what will work in designs and compositions that are only available over the Internet. The web and the Internet are changing many aspects of what you think you know about the use of audio and video. Explore these micro-film and micro-video places on the web. Keep in mind that these are generally designed with adults in mind, therefore do not be shocked by more mature themes than you were expecting; just thoroughly screen all work before its use in the classroom. Developing video for the Internet that meets public school themes generally comes later in the economic cycle. As with all resources intended for instructional use, they should be evaluated completely, beginning with seeing everything that might be used at school. Avoid surprises.  At the same time, be on the lookout for video pieces of use to your unit plans and curriculum development goals.

Browsing or "reading" the video work of others is only a tiny part of empowering teachers to create video to meet their own needs or to teach this powerful media to their students. Successful video composition requires ample hands-on experience. In doing the digital video assignment in the left column under Evoke, the easiest to use of the video editors will be explored.  Tutorials for other more challenging video editors that take longer to learn are also provided. 
 

Comprehensive Composition

Introduction to the creation, digitization and use of text editing and still images was covered in the prior chapters. This chapter addresses audio and video. Later chapters will introduce composition with animation, virtual reality, electronic design and computer programming such as Logo and Javascript. This is the composition challenge of the 21st century. The meaning of literacy is changing and it will eventually include varying degrees of all of these.

Given these many different media formats or elements of comprehensive composition that already inhabit cyberspace communication, what would it look like if they were all integrated into one composition? How many can you find on one web page or even one web site? Explore the campus radio station site, aimed at the commercial market:

• WCU's Power 90.5.

Note the linked picture at the top of this page to the campus radio station. How many media elements do you find being run from the radio station's hard drive?

The nature of comprehensive composition (using all of the above forms of communication in one piece) will have profound changes on our expectations for communication skills, and our expectations of what teachers will teach and how they will teach. Everything demonstrated here is already well within the capacity of recently purchased home, business and school computers. New computers will only become faster and more capable of doing these compositions with each year. Network speed will only increase, making it possible to deliver ever larger compositions across the Internet at useable speeds. This capacity to compose and share will in turn force continuing changes in expectations for school curriculum. A new paradigm for composition has emerged that will require continuing alteration of our school curriculum.

Web Video Publishing Activity

As chapter activities continue, you will put video and audio in your web pages. The major problem with the web video option is the relatively small storage space that you are given in many web site accounts. Off-campus companies such as GeoCities offer 16 MB of storage space for free (but with commercials unless fees are paid). Audio clips in your web pages, often associated with a still image, can fit within your existing web account space much more easily than video, but small amounts of video will fit as well.

Unit Plan Update

The directions of the last two chapters were to create the first full lesson plan. Check to see that you are very clear about how technology will be used in this opening lesson. If you have not done so, now is the time to link the lesson plan directly into section four of the unit plan. Link this lesson plan as a separate web page that is easy for other teachers to print out by itself. Be sure and include mention of the integration of the videoclip that you produce as part of this week's assignments in its appropriate place in section IV. Then move to section V and list the lessons that will follow this. See the link in the left column for further details.