EDEL 666 - Projects in Educational Computing

Topic: Multimedia Education

Syllabus

Instructor: Dr. Robert S. Houghton

CEAP Conceptual Framework

The professional education program at Western Carolina University fulfills its mission by creating and nourishing a community of learners  guided  by knowledge, values, and experiences.  The guiding principles of this  community include the belief that the best educational decisions are made after adequate reflection and with careful consideration of the interests, experiences, and welfare of the persons affected by the decisions; appreciation of and respect for diversity; and the fostering of the responsible use of technology.

Diversity - Multicultural Focus

This course, which explores all types of information content for youth, ensures an informed understanding of varied cultural and ethnic groups, and their contributions to our society. It emphasizes that all people have similar feelings and experiences; and that these universal themes/values can be central in instruction about new media and new systems of communication. The course considers current social issues, ethnic diversity, and how people can work through a common ground of information networks to provide a successful, inviting, learning environment for each student including those with cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversities and for students with exceptionalities.

Clinical or Field Experience Component

The field experience component requires participants to interact with practicing educators and other community members as part of learning the skills to develop effective multimedia education curriculum materials for a variety of educational and professional needs.

Development

A quick definition of multimedia is a presentation of information in which more than one media is in use at the same time. This course focuses on multimedia and in particular on multimedia education. It considers multimedia's educational, social and economic values. It explores compositions and designs by which multiple media can be used in sequence or in multiple combinations, for publication on the web and on CDs, and DVDs and on or with other technologies. It presumes prior experience with different media, the Web and the Internet. It presumes prior experiences in creating web pages and uploading them to make them visible to others on the Internet.

In a progressive step by step fashion, the course extends the ideas of multimedia to its maximum as "comprehensive composition" for the World Wide Web. That is, it introduces the creation and integration of seven major forms of composition in common Web-Internet use today: text, still images, animation, video, audio/music, 3D and virtual reality, and electronics (introducing sensors and remote control). Skill with text is presumed. The first topic begins with still image composition. Every two weeks another form of composition is introduced and another piece integrated into the course project theme that the participant has chosen. The remaining class sessions are used for completion of projects and presentations.. Along the way, participants will carry out readings and research, post assignments to their web site, do team collaboration over the Internet, and develop a bibliography of multimedia resources for their professional needs. The final project will be placed on a web site and/or "burned" or placed on a participant's CD (Compact Disc) or DVD. Using and learning to teach with the medium of instruction of the course, synchronous software such as Centra and Elluminate, in conjunction with other web based systems, is also part of the content of the course.

Geometry and Measurement is just one example of a model composition that includes all of the forms just mentioned and more. The layout or overall design of the composition could vary considerably from this model as long as all of the "fractional composition" forms are included.

For WCU students, the prerequisite for this course is EDEL566 (Computers in Education) or permission of the instructor. Students enrolling from other state campuses should be comfortable with email, basic use of the World Wide Web, word processing and currently maintain a web site of at least a couple of linked pages. That is, participants must be comfortable using text based compositional forms on the desktop and on the web. No other multimedia experience with any of the course topics is presumed but most course students have already had some initial experience with moving a digital camera image to a web page, and experienced an introductory exercise with digital video composition.

This course is driven by the digital convergence brought on by the computer age and cyberspace in general. It is also stimulated by changes in state teacher licensure requirements for greater multimedia experience, the state K-12 curriculum, which recently began to require integrating multimedia skills at every grade level and the rapid infusion of multimedia technologies into the Internet, which has becomes a major vehicle for educational communication and for new and expanded forms of composition in the curriculum. This in turn impacts curriculum and administrative practices in K-12 schools. Consequently, the course could also be used for CEU (Continuing Education Unit) work for license renewal of North Carolina teachers.

The College maintains an ongoing process of upgrading the Instructional Technology Center (Rm 268, Killian Bldg.) to keep state of the art technology available to all students, not just those of this course. You will also become more familiar with other resources: Hunter Library provides a computer network searchable card catalog; public access Computer Labs on campus; and two-way video sites.
 

Specific Competencies

Attendance Assignments Evaluation Bibliography Detail
Graduate students are held to graduate school standards for essays and the compositional exercises for this course. You will create a separate bibliography research assignment for each of the six major topics of the class. In addition to the research and construction of the bibliography, you must find and read one of the items in each of your six bibliographies, writing a one page single spaced reflection which at a later point must become a web page linked from online bibliography that you will develop as a part of this course. Type this up at any time using APA citation format for articles and books and APA Style of Citation for Electronic Sources (see also Walker's guide)for your citations. When your web skills develop, you will add some special characters to these word processing files to make them visible as a Web page. Other citations may be assigned as additional readings. Share this work with your graduate advisor.
v1, January, 1994; v7.1, Spring, 2007
Web address of this page: http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/Houghton/MM/syllabusMM.html
Course Home | Kitchen