Multimedia and Instruction in Education

If only it was that simple, for there is one more critical factor that will only grow in significance, the economic factor.

With this brief introduction, these points need to be revisited in greater detail.

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 print. 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.

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 important? First, this new development transforms 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.

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 that can be potentially applied to each, but currently best handled within the category of text. Examples of these seven areas, 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.

Though multimedia computer systems solved the problem of too many too difficult to access forms of media technology, policies that take advantage of this development are far too slow in arriving. 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. 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.

There is another element of networked multimedia computers that requires highlighting, and that is the concept of interaction. 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. 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:

	Educational Value	Digital Integration
Metaphor or perspective	understand and simplify by comparison and contrast with different points of view as represented by different senses through different media	the digital format requires schools to teach skills with a wide array of composition and communication applications to address tactile, aural, visual and potentially other senses
Variation	change that grabs and maintains attention	changing and integrating the media of print, still images, animation, video, 3D/virtual reality and audio
Awareness	sense what you have not previously known replacement for a sense or senses disabled greater cultural relevance	tactile, aural, visual, electronic sensors, remote control of digital devices, other interaction variations including email and web form pages
Community economy	workforce preparedness with digital communication, calculation and composition	all forms of multimedia and unimedia

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.

These reasons alone provide compelling need for multimedia curriculum integration. But other important agenda items have also emerged.

The Social Values of Multimedia

What is the relationship of computer-based multimedia to problem solving? Educators can think of Problem Solving as having three dimensions: Thought (higher order thinking skills), Sequence (methods), and Perspective (metaphor). Each dimension has an important connection to our developing multimedia capacity.

When engaged in higher order skills such as comparison, analysis, inference and evaluation, the mind must carry out its problem processing in some symbol system. Howard Gardner's work on multiple-intelligences (1993a, 1993b) showed that academic skills with verbal language and math are but two important languages (media) for thought. His interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences play an important role in the interactive nature of multimedia use between others on the Internet. Other intelligences or languages of thought from Gardner's theory including spatial, bodily kinesthetic, musical, and naturalist provide an intellectual foundation for multimedia integration. That is, multimedia not only extends our cognitive range but often takes the thinker to new areas within which to range.

Many sequences have been developed to provide a kind of scaffolding for the mind as its works through problems. Further, the different tools sets available for multimedia require sequences which are sometimes complex and relatively lengthy. Computer-based multimedia provides a constant fall-back position of help files, wizards and assistants which teach about and guide the user along these sequences. These assisting resources can be aware of the user's context at the computer and keep prompts and lists always on call to keep development of a composition solution moving forward. That is, computer-based multimedia enables more complex thinking because of the cognitive based support such software routinely provides. It was precisely this ability to extend and enrich human thought that gave writing cultures the upper hand over oral cultures.

Problems can also be seen as difficulties with a certain perspective. One of the most common ways to attack a problem is to change the perspective in some qualitative way. Multimedia capable teachers have a valuable means for enabling those changes. As composers of multimedia resources, teachers use change of perspective to meet the varied learning styles of different learners. Community leaders will find the same value in addressing communal concerns.

There are two general concerns that hold back the body politic from supporting greater integration of the information and communication technologies that have come after the creation of text on paper. The first is the reasonable concern for proof. Is there researched evidence that its use is effective? A second concern is the idea that multimedia represents a specialized high-end technology above and beyond K-12 and even University campus norms for the use of computer resources. The first is a problem of science, the second a problem of educational perception. That we pay so little attention to the former may be the result of our struggle with the latter.

Is it effective? The evidence is both short term and long term. Beyond the more recent work of Okolo and Ferretti (1998), not only is there evidence of significant impact, but that such conclusions have held up for decades. A Bertelsmann Foundation report prepared by Dr. Reeves of the University of Georgia provides a succinct summary of the issues related to scientific evidence. "Overall, fifty years of educational research indicates that media and technology are effective in schools as phenomena to learn both from and with." Finally, as with all educational and social science research, definitive proof is beyond our reach, but creative and technology-inclusive pedagogy is effective and within our reach (Reeves, 1998).

This question of effectiveness can also limit our thinking about multimedia. The effectiveness issue might be employed to mean the use of multimedia to teach the curriculum already in our curriculum standards, to teach what we have always been teaching. This is certainly useful. But, it fails to ask whether transformational possibilities exist. Can we teach differently? Does the use of multimedia suggest or allow the teaching of different content? Should it transform the very meaning of "composition course" or writing class that is a staple of education at many levels?

As for the second issue, addressing the perspective problem involves finding a way to "think outside the box". A bike race provides a useful visual metaphor. In a bicycle race, one strategy for winning is to initiate a break-away. Using a burst of speed the biker tries to disappear ahead of the competition. Generally, those that wish to remain contenders must keep up with the break-away leader. Once these leaders disappear from view, this leaves competitors unable to gauge their progress against those out in front and invariably they set a slower pace by norming among themselves. This becomes a pace that generally puts them in a position to never catch the lead again. We must be careful that the norms established on a university campus or in school districts have a reality check with actual world use and development.

To the degree that relevance to the larger world beyond classroom education is important, in fact, multimedia capacity has become the cultural norm. Educational curriculum appears to have lost sight of the emphasis on multimedia in our culture. How else can we explain Cuban's report of educators' miserly integration of new forms of communication? It is the classroom that is the back of the pack anomaly. Educators look around at other classrooms and find it is not happening there either. It is important to look beyond the classroom norms for larger cultural norms and needs to find a more relevant perspective.

In reference to personal computer technology, multimedia capacity of some sort is generally an assumed feature of computers reaching the market beginning with 1997. Multimedia capacity has been a standard feature of Macintosh computers since 1984. Even more striking, multimedia forms of information have been the principal means of communication among a significant portion the world's population, with more news and information transferring between phone, radio, television and images than the written word, for a number of years. Television and movies in turn have dominated these other multimedia forms and the written word in terms of the number of hours school-aged children choose a particular medium. This is not to imply that teachers should promote television over the written word or other forms of communication. But video is just a prominent example of a powerful multimedia communication tool that teachers have historically not been empowered to compose with for their own purposes. Instead, teachers should have the capacity to compose with many media for educational needs as they see fit as they should with any medium that is heavily used by learners and by culture in general. Cultural attitudes continue to evolve. The market for multimedia games including video games is now a larger market economically that Hollywood films. DVD use is now a greater market than buying movie tickets.

An implication of of this analysis is that funding sources must continue to expand the portion of the budget that provides for multimedia hardware, software and training and the innovative pedagogy which incorporates it.

To educators that are highly dependent on text as the primary means of communication, it can be hard to accept the very powerful aspects of other media in our culture. By its nature, the very use of other media competes with time for enhancing ones skills with the medium of text. Obsession with the medium of print and text however is self defeating. Text is enhanced if one accepts the inherent educational challenge to find ways to so meld all media that they reinforce the value of each other, such as reinforcing the value of text and its many efficiencies. We have accepted the value of this capacity without question with "early" readers, books that consist of primarily images with a touch of text. The goal must be to extend the metaphor of "early" readers to the full range of multimedia. That includes extending from minimal use to the full capacity of each medium, such as full length book or full length movie.

In fact, the Internet and the World Wide Web appear to moving in this direction. Effective use of the web with all its multimedia options requires significant amounts of reading. As our culture moves towards greater multicultural and multilingual requirements, so must our communication build on text literacy to reinforce the many positive social values of the full range of media.

With any powerful and creative force, there is also a dark side to its power. Under the guise of new technologies, old problems with sexuality, hate, truthfulness and more can and do re-emerge, a problem which requires continual vigilance. One of most disturbing is the use of media to desensitize our culture to violence. This occurs through not only the acceptance but the glorification of violence in movies, television and music. In many ways this is further proof of the capacity of new media to impact human culture.

This negative development is further magnified by training children and adolescents to kill in realistic simulations during computer games and video arcade games. Some of these games use forms of conditioning and training identical to or very similar to those used in police and military training to break the psychological instinct not to kill and replace it with government authority (Grossman, 1996). However, in these violent games marketed to children and teenagers there is no replacement with a governing authority. At first it appeared that educational research was inconclusive as to how effective computer-based simulations and games are in encouraging more violent behavior, though seen as an issue deserving further attention (Centerwall, 1989). By the year 2000, six major organizations representing the public health community (American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Academy of Child &Adolescent Psychiatry) issued a joint statement condemning the current use of violence in media commonly available to youth.

Among other conclusions, the joint statement noted that children and youth with heavy exposure to violence are "more likely to view violence as an effective way of settling conflicts" with such behavior continuing into later life. Further, such exposure decreases the likelihood that they will take action on behalf of a victim of violence. Confirmation of the impact on school grades and school behaviors continues (Funk, et al.). More recently critics have taken labeling a genre of media with the title of murderware (Newton, 2004). Through the critique of such "curriculum materials" provided by our culture, through political lobbying and more, through an understanding of the psychology by which violence and killing is enabled, educators must work strenuously to defang this significant and dangerous use of new media (Kopel, 1995). Media literacy project materials for dealing with violence and other media issues are commonly available: e.g., Directory of Media Literacy Sites Worldwide; Center for Media Literacy; Related PBS Media Literacy Sites and Programs; New Mexico Media Literacy Project. The Lion & Lamb Project provides an extensive list of current research on the impact of exposure to violence.

This is not to imply that new media is inherently violent. Rather, it is inherent that malevolent cultural forces work constantly to find new ways to emerge. It is inherent that citizens must constantly guard against the wolves of old problems emerging under the sheepskin of new developments. This requires the active engagement of our pedagogy, not avoidance.

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.

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.

Unimedia - Comprehensive Composition

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

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. They add another giant new extension to the concepts of reading and writing. Collectively, they can serve as guides 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

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Rationale for Multimedia Use
and Instruction in Education

Introduction to Multimedia Thinking

Multimedia's Educational Values

The Social Values of Multimedia

Problem Solving

Politics & Learning - the Art of the Allocation of Resources

The Impact on Reading Skills

Reinforcing Negative Social Values

Multimedia's Economic Value

Getting There

Unimedia - Comprehensive Composition

Summary

Bibliography

Briganti, Lodovico de (2003). The Path to Cross-Media Integration. Unisys. Retrieved on November 18, 2003 from http://www.unisys.com/media/ insights/insightscompendium/ thepathtocross_d0_media __integration.htm#3

Last modified v7.8, November 28, 2004.

Rationale for Multimedia Use and Instruction in Education

Introduction to Multimedia Thinking

Multimedia's Educational Values

The Social Values of Multimedia

Problem Solving

Politics & Learning - the Art of the Allocation of Resources

The Impact on Reading Skills

Reinforcing Negative Social Values

Multimedia's Economic Value

Getting There

Unimedia - Comprehensive Composition

Summary

Bibliography

Briganti, Lodovico de (2003). The Path to Cross-Media Integration. Unisys. Retrieved on November 18, 2003 from http://www.unisys.com/media/ insights/insights__compendium/ the__path__to__cross_d0_media __integration.htm#3

Last modified v7.8, November 28, 2004.

Rationale for Multimedia Use
and Instruction in Education

Briganti, Lodovico de (2003). The Path to Cross-Media Integration. Unisys. Retrieved on November 18, 2003 from http://www.unisys.com/media/ insights/insightscompendium/ thepathtocross_d0_media __integration.htm#3