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Multimedia's Economic Value

The allocation of resources stimulated by political judgment has a special economic impact. The absence of a tax on Internet based sales has been an enormous boon to online sales systems and the further expansion of computer networks. Changing laws encouraging integration of radio, television and newspapers have accelerated new business models. Businesses which are expanding are not just seeking employees that are digitally savvy, they are moving out of digital ghettos and to areas with digitally knowledgeable and creative communicators (Florida, 2002). Hewlett Packard's digital village project in East Palo Alto, California, is one example of the kinds of support needed to build a concentration of digital knowledge in areas of need (HP World, 2003). Jesse Jackson observed that in just three years the community had gone from a sense of despair to one of joy. Computer and multimedia education can impact the economy of the community. However, resource allocation has yet to accomplish a solution to the growing digital divide, an issue of special importance to public schools which are highly dependent on the wealth of their local economy for high-technology growth.

There are many highly visible examples of the changes created by the corporate side the knowledge economy. Three-dimensional movie characters (3D animation) have become a highly profitable form of film. Interactive computer games have created an entertainment market that is as large as the market in the billions for Hollywood movies. Business models are emerging which use the language of media integration, media aggregation, and cross-media integration. Old format media companies are recognizing that they must change with the times, and are looking for employees that can help merge the values of newspaper publishing, radio and television for their existing formats and the Internet. Technologies still being researched such as digital paper will further fuel the movement. For example, wireless handheld computers (PDAs) may grab the news from a wireless hub in a subway station, then transfer it to a large sheet of digital paper for reading during a commute. Businesses, corporations and communities which feel the need to grow the economy by providing new age job opportunities recognize the economic value provided by these new forms of communication and composition, which leads Chamber of Commerce organizations to actively attract companies with multimedia interests to their communities. Changing perspective comes with a struggle but there is evidence of new thinking emerging and being supported with effective business thinking and software (Jaffee, 2003; Adobe, 2003). The twenty-first century is about the knowledge economy. Economic value is increasingly developing from the convergence of media.

How much should be allocated and how important is education to information and communication technologies (ICT) that make up the space for multimedia? An important and comprehensive evaluation of the ICT status of all the countries of the world was recently completed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) , a organization within the United Nations. ITU created a "digital access index" (November, 2003) and from it developed the world's first global ICT ranking. The United States (tied for tenth place with Canada) apparently has much to learn from the 9 countries that ranked ahead of it on this index. The number of schools and students in the United States with lower educational and technical opportunities was a factor in the United States not being higher on this list. This analysis should be of some importance to United States corporations, political systems and educational systems interested in maintaining global leadership in the knowledge age.

Getting There

 There is an international organization of teacher educators that use technology, SITE. SITE stands for the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education. It is made up primarily of university faculty in teacher education programs, but also includes school district media specialists, private schools and interested teachers. The several hundred folks who attended their international conference represent a broad spectrum of United States teacher education programs. It is clear from their presentations and papers, that multimedia is an integral part of the design, research, development and teaching concerns of many programs. To the degree that a college and school district is concerned about best of class and leadership with information technology, multimedia capacity and coursework is simply required.

 Within the College of Education and Allied Professions as Western Carolina University, multimedia capacity provided a number of tangible and less tangible benefits.  Existing capacity and production played a key role in the college's citation for excellence in the quality of its computer and information technology program by an NCATE evaluation team. This capacity had led to the development of several web projects that heavily use multimedia. All of those projects have immediate application to college students (e.g., CROP) of which video training clips are an important part. The North Carolina history project (LAMP) and its offspring, the WCU Adventures of the American Mind program, also emphasize multimedia resources. The third, Project Jumpstart, provides training videoclips for basic computer technology training for Microsoft Office and is done in collaboration with the faculty center. Within just one semester of a graduate Multimedia Education course, the college's web server began broadcasting some one hundred videoclips that represent over two hours of streaming video. Streaming video is video that plays while the rest of the video is being downloaded. This capacity, in effect, turns the college web server into a miniature TV broadcast station initially broadcasting clips of just a minute or so in duration. Such technology is also important to the professional development and the competitiveness of faculty that must teach about and with information technology. The college also provides an Instructional Technology Specialist certification (077) and the multimedia work of these graduate students is important for those filling those central office positions in the college's region.

 The degree to which schools in the region around a university use multimedia is likely to extend over a wide range. Many schools make inadequate use of the multimedia resources that are already available (Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 1997,1998), often because of lack of exposure and training by their teachers. Their situation is not because of lack of publications on multimedia education. In addition to numerous articles (Lamb, 1991), book length works go back a number of years with a steady stream of new works also appearing (Avers & Barron, 1997; Falk & Carlson, 1995; Garrand, 1996). That school districts are winning state awards for their multimedia developments indicates that training and education is certainly part of the solution. These public school efforts are generally led by media specialists and librarians who do have adequate training and awareness of what they can do with what they have, awareness of what they need to acquire and a district situation supportive of these information age efforts. College and university campuses that create partnerships with these leaders can do much to further this development.

A quick example provides a typical situation of a school close to current standards for computer technology. At one of College's  Professional Development Schools, in addition to a number of older systems that are multimedia capable, the building had a new computer lab with some fifteen computers with multimedia editing capability, including digital video editing. Their principal has attended my evening graduate course on Multimedia Education from time to time, and the last time she attended she brought along an interested teacher as well. One of their goals was to do as other schools around the country have done, and create their own school newscast. Students would shoot the video with their own existing camcorders, and edit the pieces on the computer. They could save this work to videotape and broadcast it over the building's close circuit cable TV system. Their training and knowledge however was inadequate to the task and led to extended dialog over how to solve this problem. After an extended time period measured in months, the school began regular student newscasts. The College is fortunate in that its Instructional Technology Center has the hardware, software and trained lab assistants to manage a wide range of multimedia composition tools.

 Based on my observations, the regional use around the college is probably consistent with the study done by Larry Cuban that looks at technology integration going back to the 1920's. His work showed that over the decades some ten percent of elementary and five percent of high school teachers make significant use of whatever new information technologies are in popular use. Cuban's work can be read to imply that new communications systems and innovations could simply be ignored. Our educational system and many of its employees have neither the resources, support or interest in its practice. His work can also be read as documentation for what must be done to make changes. His study is an indication of how far we must progress in order to bring some ninety percent of our classrooms current with our information age culture. Technology refusal (Hodas, 1993 ; McKenzie, 1994) in various forms remains an ongoing concern. It is a concern that goes beyond basic technology training and includes deep systemic psychological, political and sociological considerations. Education has been key to the progress that has been made.

To this point in the essay, the ideas presented have argued for the value of integrating multimedia technology into existing courses, into the current educational system. There is another case to make. Multimedia has so transformed the power of communication through the integration of computers and networks, that it has outgrown the term multimedia itself. Something new has emerged. This new element will continue to change our curriculum in major ways.

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

To cite this composition:

Houghton, R. S. (2003). 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.