Page 2

Multimedia's Educational Values

The history of being a current multimedia composer or educator will show that it has not been as simple and easy as working with speech and  print. These problems were not only ones of cost, but also of time. The transition from analog to digital technologies has been transforming the factors of cost and time from a major to a minor issue for individuals but still a major factor for the budgets of public school systems. In spite of these difficulties there is a sense of a culture finding such value in multimedia that it is transforming its definition of literacy, a definition that will increasingly include multimedia literacy.

The Challenges of Multimedia Education

Educational use of multimedia has been increasingly strained by its many technologies and this has created an ongoing problem. Integrating multimedia into presentations, lesson plans and unit plans has often meant selecting one or more different machines to play or to enable a communication form. Once instructors went beyond large charts, globes and pull-down maps, multimedia became much more costly, cumbersome, complicated and less reliable as machines were needed. Further, as many of these machines were expensive, they were not routinely placed in every classroom. Instead, someone needed to make a trip to a media center to obtain the machine, then set it up and adjust it, then return it when finished. An educator might have needed one cart in the room for the VCR, one for the overhead, one for the music player, another for the stereo system with speakers and radio tuner, and another for the videodisc player and so forth. If a teacher wanted to create any of these media, even more and different expensive machinery was needed.

This situation seriously taxes the time resources of a teacher and the financial resources of a school. From one perspective, this has been further complicated by the advent of personal computers which needed even more expensive projection systems for whole class use and were even more complicated and temperamental in situations where they had to be set up, sometimes connected to other multimedia devices and then returned. All these are factors in Cuban's report (1986) of the minimal and ineffective use that most educators have been able to make of media since the 1920's. On top of all these options, something newer emerged, the multimedia Internet.

The educational system obliged by hooking up most classrooms in the United States with the Internet and putting a single connected computer in the classroom. The multimedia computer system solved the problem of too many too difficult to access forms of media technology, but then gave most educators no way to convincingly share that multimedia capable computer with the entire class. Current educational practices would be laughable if they were not so frustrating. Internet based multimedia computer systems are the least expensive and easiest to use systems for providing interaction with the widest range of communication and composition possible to the greatest number. Though schools in the United States commonly have a single computer with Internet access in each classroom, the classrooms routinely have no capacity for the whole class to see or hear what it can provide. The personal computer with its 15 inch computer display screen and tiny speaker is mismatched for use with those presenting and teaching to entire rooms. To call it a personal computer in a school classroom is an oxymoron. Would you call yours a personal computer if you shared it with 27 office mates? The solution of a computer projection system is absent from most classrooms. The solution of a computer on each student desktop is even more distant. More common is one projection system on a cart that is shared among a large group of teachers. To the 21st century educator, a single classroom computer without a computer projection system in a class of 20 plus students is akin to requiring use of a single straw for a dehydrated sports team. Educational policies that take advantage of multimedia development are far too slow in arriving.

Accepting that the old audio-visual agenda such as television and still images on overheads, though somewhat taxing, is still effectively useful to some 10% of elementary and 5% of high school teachers (Cuban, 1986) and university professors (Cuban, 2003), why is computer-based Internet-delivered multimedia more important?

The Vision of Multimedia

Digital and Internet based multimedia transform the current situation. It takes just one machine, a computer, to "play" each of these media, with the computer acting as media "jukebox" to a district and Internet storage system of staggering capacity. Further, the same machine with different software applications can be used for the composition of all of these multimedia forms. This is a powerful new development. Internet and DVD capable computers now provide the most cost-effective way to deliver or utilize an enormous and still rapidly growing base of free multimedia based material of great value to educational classroom activity.

Ideas Links Input here.		Music, voice, effects
Text/program	Still image	Sound	Video	Animation	3D/VR	Electronics

The multimedia Internet now includes all seven of the major multimedia forms: text and programming, still images, audio, video, animation, three-dimensional imagery, virtual reality and electronics device controllers (e.g., sensors, telescopes, robots). Interaction is an additional concept but one that can be potentially applied to each and all. Examples of these eight areas (including interaction), further information about them, and opportunity for interaction can be found by clicking the link areas in the table above this paragraph or at the top of this page. Three of the boxes in the top row of this table also have active areas. These examples include the product of software multimedia editors such as iMovie, Premiere, Bryce, Fireworks and more and in turn can be used by other multimedia editors such as Powerpoint and Hyperstudio. Further, the Internet provides accessibility to samples of a wide array of multimedia for different curriculum areas that are available for purchase which would never otherwise even be seen for consideration by the average classroom teacher.

This last element of networked multimedia computers, interaction, requires highlighting. In contrast with prior media machines, the element of interaction in computer based systems is so significant as to be a candidate for consideration as another type of media. Film, TV, music, and print are just different kinds of display media that all have contributed to one of the excesses of our culture, the enduring "couch potato", an all too common non-interactive life style which is both physically, mentally and culturally debilitating. Web publishing can also add to the problem and be no more than paper on electronic screens. However, those who understand the full range of possibilities know that transformational compositions and sites can be created. The concepts and implications of interaction are an incredibly deep and complex topic and best left to further consideration elsewhere (Houghton, 1989). What is important to accent here is that the same technology that displays and presents can also be used to invite interaction and participation. It is worth re-emphasizing that beyond becoming effective users of the multimedia based works of others and beyond using the web to become international publishers of professional work and the work of students, there is an even more important opportunity. Those authors, educators and learners with networked computer systems can create interactive compositions that also foster more creators and composers. To compose is to become involved in interaction with others. To create is a liberating experience. Interaction is essential to both. Without both, culture is dead.

Through multimedia technologies, educators can also develop work tailored not to the commercial needs of Hollywood, but to the specific educational needs of the students in their classroom. Computer technology provides a "curb-cut" that simplifies and accelerates the development of localized multimedia-based curriculum. Further, without this composition knowledge, educators are unable to make the most of Federal "fair use" provisions of the copyright law for multimedia that allow educators to clip and snip images, videoclips and audioclips out of longer works for educational use. That is, multimedia provides ever greater cultural relevance and educational focus.

In curriculum, significant power belongs to those who can create it and extends to the degree that they do create it. Multimedia technologies today include what has been the most powerful communication form in recent Western culture, notably motion pictures (e.g., film and television) and their related composition tools. Digital camcorders are readily available for purchase. Digital video editors allow anyone to easily edit and assemble their own video. Both Macintosh and Windows operating systems now include video editors as a part of the basic application software sold with each computer. With these resources teachers can and will develop and maintain the rights to their own copyrighted video and audio work. Web servers allow the teacher's classroom computer unprecedented power to share videoclip and other media knowledge over greater geographic range than an earth based satellite. Within seconds of activating the built-in web server of Macintosh, Windows or Linux operating systems, or downloading web server freeware from the Internet, any current Internet-capable computer workstation rivals the technical power and global reach of international magazine publishers, and radio and television broadcast stations. This is unprecedented communication and educational power made significantly easier to wield.

For the reason of cultural relevance if no other, educators also need to teach the creation of video and the other multimedia extensions as effectively as they teach the creation of writing. For reasons of professional practice, every teacher needs to become as comfortable composing video and other media as they are composing text. Further, working with video provides an excellent gateway experience that draws the user into work with other media. Through such composition, new and popular avenues for imagination, creativity, fantasy and economic activity emerge.

The concept of interaction for active minds also extends to email, instant messaging, web form pages for surveys, collaborative writing, audio conferencing, video conferencing, and networked white boards, simulations and games. As advances in Internet programming improve, this interaction is likely to extend itself in the future to include other forms of interaction. In story based compositions, this might include the ability to choose multiple plot variations and endings. It might include the capacity to accompany, Karaoke like, many types of multimedia performance or to alter performance parameters, such as choosing different instrument sounds to be played for different parts of the music.

Every educator depends on some form of multimedia every day; multimedia computers are within reach of many teachers. The educational values of multimedia computers can be summarized as:
 

For many educators, there is only one question. Is there evidence that it "works"? In one specific example of such study, Okolo and Ferretti (1998) showed that student composition representing ideas simultaneously through text and audio, video and sound  increased the likelihood that students will acquire an understanding of complex information. It is a reasonable conjecture that using an even wider range of media will extend this effect. The same study also noted that students with a wide range of abilities "readily mastered these tools and were highly motivated by the opportunity to augment their writing with other media."  That is, this increased variety of expression enhanced attitudes as well. The question of efficacy will be brought up again in the context below of politics.

The Tipping Point for Multimedia Literacy

Whether something works for educators or not, there is also the question of preferences for what works for a given culture. The term literacy has long stood for the basic ability to reason through reading and writing. Generalizing that definition positions us to see its application to a wide range of technologies. Literacy can also be seen as the skill needed to think, create and reason at the level preferred by a given culture. This perspective is taken by scholars associated with New Media Studies. When basic literacy emerged a few thousand years ago, just a handful of isolated cultures practiced this skill. Numerous languages today still have no written form. In the early history of writing, just a tiny percentage of people needed these skills. Over time, literacy spread across and within cultures. Consequently, the definition of literacy and the policies as to who needs this skill are relative to the needs of a culture. Is multimedia in widespread cultural use?

Our cultural needs are evolving at an accelerating pace. It has only been in last 100 years that universal literacy has become a standard educational goal. It has only been in the last few years of human history that multimedia computers and networks, notably after 1994 and the commercialization of the Internet, have rapidly driven the concept of multimedia literacy to more general attention. As the application of literacy is relative to developments in the culture, educators need a way to determine new literacy standards and the tipping points at which to apply various multimedia standards to various groups within a population. Will there be a point at which college graduates are the first to need universal multimedia literacy skills and then spread those skills by working downward through the ages of school populations? It also could work the other way around. Might colleges find that a growing percentage of their incoming students are already multimedia literate and build on that knowledge?

How does one determine the tipping point at which to apply new literacy skills, notably multimedia skills? What were the factors at work over the last centuries century when basic literacy went from an elite few to nice for many to universally required? Can we relate the factors of basic literacy's universal tipping point to current forces at work with multimedia? Measuring the use of the many different media that serve as global standards for communication and publication on the World Wide Web provide a starting point for measuring the need and time for new tipping points.

Certain enabling factors seem obvious. Basic costs issues had to be solved. It is no coincidence that universal literacy was arriving at the same time that the industrial age was driving down the cost of pencils, paper and books. One could conjecture that the information age is also driving down the cost of all things digital, and may be reaching the cost tipping point for widespread access to school children. Reaching a point of widespread use by adults is also critical.

Other factors include availability and common cultural practices. Media standards in the adult community are stabilized in several multimedia areas. For example, initial standards for interaction seem well established with email and live chat, and object and link clicking; close behind are increasingly common tools for audio and video communication. Because of their ready availability, listening to audio and playing video have become the next standards for Internet use beyond text. Video editors and audio editors are standard inclusions in computer operating systems. Animation is everywhere on the web, but animation editors must still be purchased separately. The Report of the 21st Century Literacy Summit by the New Media Consortium (2005) documented heavy multimedia use and available tools, and established national working groups to move the multimedia literacy agenda forward.

These reasons alone provide compelling need for multimedia curriculum integration and targeted multimedia literacy goals for school curriculum planning. But other important agenda items have also emerged.

Next Page  >>>

Launch Parent Frame | Top of this Page | Printer friendly view of the entire article

Pages: 1 Intro  2 Educational Values  3 Social Values  4 Economic Value  5 Unimedia  6 Bibliography

To cite this composition:

Houghton, R. S. (2006). Rationale for Multimedia Use and Instruction in Education. Western Carolina University. Retrieved on (put date of retrieval here) from http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/Houghton/MM/RationaleMMframes.html

Disclaimer: Any errors are those of the author, and the paper's opinions do not represent any official position of Western Carolina University. The author greatly appreciates the prompt notification of any errors.