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Rationale for Multimedia Use and Instruction in Education

Page 5

Unimedia - Comprehensive Composition

For the first time in history we have one medium in which interaction and  text and programming, still image, audio, video, animation, virtual reality and electronic device control (e.g. sensors) are fused into one display with one overarching technology, the computer. The unimedia composition that you are reading utilizes all seven of the multimedia areas in the table at the top of this essay. The creation of examples of the juxtaposition of  text and other media forms provides a number of powerful possibilities for composition, communication and calculation, as these further examples show:  As the web (the Internet) acquired the power to share such media forms, the computer gained global publishing power. As the web merges every prior medium, new-age composers will incorporate the full range of metaphor, variation and awareness in one presentation space, with one machine. The computer has become the universal reader. The computer has also become the universal writer. The web page has become the universal form for communication. But the integration is even tighter than the mere parallel display of text, sound and image on one web page. These elements interact. Within the same web page, a click on text changes adjacent video display. Video display can change text either called automatically as the video plays or with a click within the video display area. Each media form can control the timing and display of the other. It is no more proper to think of this as multimedia than it is to think of writing as multi-speech. There is a new level of integration. It is not too far-fetched to conclude that the web-based medium will dominate all prior medium in the twenty-first century. Where will those authors come from who can compose such integrated works? If not multimedia, then what term should we use?

It is worth pausing to let the import of that thought sink in more deeply. Though the Internet began as a text-only communication system, in the last few years it has matured as an important multimedia publication medium for all the technologies of human communication. Though still in its infancy this medium already provides not only the smallest organizations but even individuals with a broadcast range that surpasses all prior technologies in human history. In the technology research labs the quality of display is already as high or higher than all prior technologies for all media. Further, the form factor for the display of this media is greater than all prior technologies, from screens in research labs that turn and twist in all the sizes and flexibility of paper to functioning stadium size video walls. New generations of communicators must compose for this new world.

In contrast with the integrating nature of this medium, our education of learners for the emerging world of web composition is fractured, incomplete and balkanized. This is true from elementary school through university graduate programs. As members and participants in our educational system, we have an obligation to organize and develop the merging of all prior communication skills. We have an opportunity to develop a school of holistic composition. Though the web term of "linking" is cognitively the shortest term to express the technical aspects of integrating multimedia, linking is insufficient to express the deeper power that it contains. Others promote the term uni-media or unimedia as a label for this deep integration, though this term is somewhat ambiguous. The phrase "comprehensive composition" is another offering as a phrase to replace the reign of the term multimedia and less awkward than the "holistic composition" phrase.

Comprehensive composition involves the planned cross-media integration, the unimedia integration and design of multiple units or forms of communication. Cross-media is an industry term for putting key ideas into multiple compositions in different media so that the audience hears a variation on the same idea on the radio, still image, television, print, the web and more. Unimedia integration refers to all these media in one digital composition, on the web or perhaps on a DVD. At one level such composition parallels the mechanical skills required in reading (transposition of of written characters into thought) and writing (transfer of thought into written characters). More importantly, this media linking is open to and parallels the more advanced reflection and organization  required of larger structures such as essays, books, and movies. Future curriculum for 21st century learners must consist of reading, writing AND linking a range of multimedia elements. The cultural importance of this transition parallels the magnitude of change initiated by the move thousands of years ago from oral to written culture. With time, reading and writing gained an aura that is represented by the vast depth and range of the content of today's libraries. With time, a similar development will happen with comprehensive composition.

 How vast is the opportunity for educational and cultural change before us? Imagine a world in which each of the primary and secondary colors is taught as a separate content or subject area, courses which separately study the expression and composition of shades of each of these six colors. In this world, each color has a deep tradition of study and expression that extends back decades and in some case centuries. Then, suddenly, someone discovered that these six colors could be mixed to create new colors, and that the concept of mixing colors on one canvas was born. New works of millions of combinations that had never been seen would have emerged. Such is the state of our education for composition today. The web is the new canvas upon which new works of integration are being wrought.

The system for delivering on the opportunity of multimedia is in distant contrast to its potential. In the university environment the study of different forms of composition is fractured into different colleges and schools. Written composition "belongs" to the English department. Radio, television and theater composition belongs to communication arts. Image creation from canvas to photography belongs to the art department. Music belongs to the music department. Yet one web page can contain all these elements and more in interaction with each other. Some skills are still not part of the regular curriculum for all students even if in college, such as radio and television. Other skills are not even a part of the university agenda. For example, many institutions have not even one course in any program devoted to virtual reality development. Such offerings in K-12 public schools too often depend solely on the random interests of individual teachers. Rare is the person with the confidence to "paint" with the full palette of media colors let alone the confidence to teach others to paint with this broad range of expression. Yet attitudes are changing. Notes Dr. Roger Brown (2003), University of North Carolina - Penbroke's Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, "The very essence of university education and research must include the emerging variety of communications and artistic media that will shape our society and global dialogue in the twenty-first century."

Nothing said here should be taken to imply that acquiring multimedia composition and linking skills is simple, that is just a matter of an another semester length course. Learning these skills is the equivalent complexity of learning to read and write, skills our educational system spreads over ten or more years. As basic reading ability can be grasped relatively quickly but sophisticated use takes a dozen years or more, so it is with multimedia. But it must be said that for the first time, the basic knowledge and tools are within the grasp of even primary level students who are given sufficient time and education with these technologies. Never has such power to communicate and express been put within reach of so many teachers and learners through computer based technology. No one can put an idea in-context better than front-line teachers in the classroom or learners using multimedia to construct meaning as they progress. This is an opportunity that deserves to be advanced.

Numerous administrative challenges arise in considering such a concept. Should all composition classes be part of a vast new multimedia program? How would such a degree work if composition programs of study and faculty were to stay in different departments in K-12 and beyond? How will the infrastructure of multimedia and its delivery network be supported? To be empowered to compose requires many types of peripherals which input data into a multimedia capable computer, e.g., scanners, camcorders, videotape deck, television, microphones, and camera stands. Computer technology provides the easiest, fastest and in many cases the least expensive way to create audio-video materials. The software is easy enough that students as well as teachers can and do create professional quality work. The most recent generations of computer technology have the capacity to become superb multimedia display systems, played from the massive storage of CD-ROMs and DVDs such as multimedia encyclopedias or downloaded from the gargantuan and still radically expanding resources of the Internet. But even more valuable, personal computers can have the facility to digitize any media and then to compose, transpose, edit and publish, moving the multimedia material from the computer to slide, videotape, audiotape, CD-ROM or DVD disc, floppy disk, removeable computer chip and more.

Comprehensive composition knowledge has practical benefits as well. This facility to invent with computer-based multimedia allows you to put your multimedia needs in the local context, in the context of the learner, and in the display formats available to them. Increasing ease of use allows the youngest of learners to become composers, finders and editors for their own linking needs as well as allow teachers and administrators to do the same. Preservice and inservice evaluation forms routinely include instructional variation as one of the important factors in assessing the quality of teaching. More recently different states, notably North Carolina, have required multimedia knowledge and skills as a part of the preservice licensure program. In addition to all these professionally serious concerns, many find multimedia development motivational and renewing. The elements of multimedia linking are a great source of fun, inspiration and creativity.

Summary

Our vocabulary needs to change with the times; unimedia is more in line with the direction our culture is going than the historic development of multimedia as a conglomerate of competing media, though the two terms are likely to be seen as synonymous. Current thinking provides evidence that unimedia is important to aspects of teaching, learning and problem solving including the areas of higher order thinking and multiple intelligences. Deeper examination of the value of multimedia skills to local and regional economies is being thoroughly explored through a wide range of publication, but in summary, its economic value is significant growing. It is also clear that unimedia represents culturally significant forms of communication within our Western culture and there is increasing need for people with the skills to do this kind of work. Within the culture of education, school districts and colleges of education have demonstrated a recognition of its relevance through its inclusion in facilities and curriculum. It should also be noted that state and national educational standards require multimedia resources, skills and knowledge. Computer-based Internet delivered unimedia is the most cost-effective advertising and distribution system for the media that is available. Higher bandwidth formats of information, such as DVD technology and increasingly removeable computer chip drives, will provide the basis for the highest quality formats of multimedia and unimedia. Further, computer technology provides curb-cuts for multimedia that simplify its creation and development.

In short, multimedia delivers important teaching and learning values: metaphor, variation and awareness. Most important of all, these three conceptual values and the full range of today's unimedia technologies merge together to provide opportunity for a new form of human communication and a new foundation for economic activity. Multimedia literacy adds another giant new extension to the concepts of basic literacy, of reading and writing text. Collectively, multimedia technologies provide landmarks for new curriculum development. They enable the newest power of the information and knowledge age, the concept of unimedia and comprehensive composition.
 
 

Author: Dr. Robert S. Houghton
Houghton@email.wcu.edu
College of Education and Allied Professions
Western Carolina University

Version: 1, 1996; Version 7.32; Last modified August 14, 2004.

 

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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.