Chapter Eight

The Future of Unimedia Composition

This final chapter concentrates on the future of unimedia composition. As this digital book has shown, unimedia builds on the intellectual heritage of the paper technology based article and book. It would seem that unimedia designs push into the digital future, yet increasingly they are part of the digital present. Thinking that improves critical perspective, that provides a gauge to measure progress with unimedia/multimedia communication, may be the most important design contribution of all to the future of unimedia.

Many of the key differences between the book and the web will be given discussion and examples. Further exploration and continual expansion of the knowledge of different types of media is essential for future growth of its composers and of the concept itself.  Ultimately, the future of unimedia or multimedia will depend on the quality of the criticism brought to such compositions. An examination of criteria useful to evaluating multimedia is the most important part of this chapter. Finally, having studied and composed with seven different media, this chapter asks unimedia authors to include one last media in their course composition, interaction. User feedback and direct contribution to a composition in such a way that future readers can find this new material is a design concept unique to the web. This chapter also models this type of reader interaction through methods provided in the chapter. Your participation in the interaction questions of this chapter is expected as you find these interaction opportunities.

The Start Menu corner of the frames not only leads to the chapter table of contents, but options for aiding reader focus. Options to play the music in the left or right frames enables the reader to hide a potentially distracting page to better focus on the one of their choice. The table of contents' sections will be overviewed here to provide context and direction to the goals of the chapter. The WonderWeb page continues to provide a place for course participant interaction. It has provided a place to not only demonstrate the reader's capacity and persistence in documenting penetrating questions about multimedia, but to also enable participants to build community by learning from and helping each other with the practical elements of this study. The WonderWeb page has been a running example of the capacity of the web to invite the viewer's own authorship. The benefit of such documentation and community extends to the degree to which participants engaged.

This chapter will  take this interaction concept to a new level and provide instruction on how to include different forms of viewer participation. Note the link in the chapter menu to Unimedia Blog. Clicking it will place this web log site for this chapter in the rightmost frame. Use the middle frame border to widen the right frame to better display the blog site or right click this link to open it in a new window. Read and response to the thoughts and questions provided in the blog postings. In the later link to Reader Interaction Assignments you will be asked to create a similar design that includes the blog site created in chapter one.

Scattered through out the web pages of this chapter are questions needing your response. Be on the lookout for such questions and respond as you find them. In the Reader Interaction Assignment page are directions on how to place similar links in your own web project design. Helping the reader move from outsider as reader to insider as composer is an important cross-over point in their own study of any subject. How many questions are necessary for a teacher to know they have crossed over to ownership of the pursuit of a topic? What kinds of questions work best for this achievement? What implications should unimedia have for teaching methods classes in reading, writing, social studies, science and math?

This multimedia education textbook taught a new, expressively rich, in-depth way to think about the nature of thinking and of responding to a problem or question. To communicate the nature of the problem, or to provide an in-depth response to discoveries made in dealing with a problem or question, unimedia composition includes and blends distinctly different forms of expression. Each of the media add their own special contribution to ways of thinking. Each provides its own opportunities for creativity. The potentially rich blend of these digital media suggest that world culture is at the dawn of a new era in composition.

Education conferences have played an important role in the integration of new technologies. In the sharing of projects and innovations, presenters can learn as much from their audiences as their audiences learn from their presentations. Once at the conference, presenters learn even more by attending the sessions of others. One of the several high quality educational technology conferences occurs around November 29 to December second each year, the NCETC (North Carolina Educational Technology Conference), with some 2,000 educators from around the state and multi-state region. The NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) is the major national/international conference of the year for educators, and the information and call for presenters for NECC 2006 is available. Conferences are eager to hear from and learn from the kinds of leading edge thinking and development that course participants have been working through. Dream a little. To help grow your own expertise and reputation and contribute to your field, make future plans for presenting at one of these conferences.

In different ages, different elements of human culture undergo rapid change, changing the goals of teaching and learning. One of my grandfathers was born in the year 1900. During his lifetime, he lived to witness, and as newspaper editor, write about the experience of watching men land on the moon. It is worth contemplating how many changes of world-view and understandings of human capacity he lived through during his time in terms of just physical transportation. Born into an age in which the horse and buggy was dominating yet slowly yielding to designs that used motors in cars, trucks and buses, jets and rocket ships, he was witness and participant to radical changes in personal perception and lifestyle.

For children born in the year 2000, the changes of this age seem dominated by information system change. Paper technology is still dominating yet slowly yielding to designs that all flow onto computer screen displays, simultaneously flowing text, image, audio, video, 2D and 3D animation and incoming data from remote sensors. This digital medium of cyberspace creates new and interesting challenges for education, for teachers and for learners. Much remains to be discovered, developed and implemented. New composition goals for school curriculum must be drawn from this cultural reality.

 

Interaction Design Bibliography

Bibliographies: Still - Audio - Video - 2D - 3D - Sensor - interact - MM

 

Shelves

 Garrett, Jesse James (2002). The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web. http://www.jjg.net/elements/

Mirel, Barbara (2003). Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving: Getting the Work Right. Morgan Kaufmann.

Kuniavsky, Mike (2002). Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies). Morgan Kaufmann.

Rogers, Yvonne; Sharpe, Helen; & Preece, Jennifer (2002). Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction. New York: Wiley, John & Sons.

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