Teaching Students Media and Multi-media Curriculum with the Implementation of a WAN in Media Studies Facilities

Valerie Greenberg
Nelda Meixner
University of Texas

May 7, 1999

We have entered a new age. According to Marshall McLuhan:

"Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition,. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay." (McLuhan 13 )

Economists and social theorists claim that the United States and other developed countries have moved from industrial-based economies to information-based economies. Creating and distributing information for entertainment, investing and economic decision making account for large portion of America's national product. In addition, information is a commodity that represents knowledge and the ability to transcend socioeconomic class. (Littlejohn 326)

Marshall McLuhan believed that what really made a difference in a person's life was the type of media that they used, not the content which it delivered. While other theorists might disagree, since then a breathtaking transformation has taken place, where media and computer based information technology are merging, provoking and demanding new forms of teaching to prepare students to enter a world where multi-media allows the transmission of video, audio, and graphics through networking.

Multimedia elements highlight the potential of computer-based learning by expanding the two-dimensional text-based world of traditional books and written information to include a more compelling mix of media. The term multimedia is used to describe any program, workstation, network, and activity that support the use of sounds, graphics, and video. Most equipment necessary to utilize these components are found naturally occurring within most Communications, IT, or RTF based communications departments in small colleges as well as larger universities. So it would seem a natural progression then, to link the capabilities of microphones and video production tools to computers with digitalized production software such as ProTools or Adobe Director to produce a networked situation in several areas of a communications college. How to accomplish this?

Utilize a WAN. A Wide Area Network (WAN) is a communication system that connects geographically remote equipment. This type of network is primarily used to interconnect an organization's voice, video, data and computer systems including their Local Area Networks (LAN).

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While this is the most common use of a WAN within industrial organizations, educational institutions are jumping on the Networking bandwagon as more and more schools and universities have come to realize the benefits of networking within their school districts.

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One of the most prized benefits to networking in educational settings is that it can connect your school or district LAN to the Internet and the World Wide Web. Educators can tap into vast stores of information and knowledge within a school locally that only a few years ago would have been impossible to house in one location. With use of the WWW and Internet, instead of students and faculty locally visiting their school's library, they can connect to libraries worldwide. The Smart Valley Guidebook remarks: "While a LAN lets you access software shared among your school's workstations, the Internet allows you to sample software developed around the world. Via the Internet, you WAN can let you communicate with professionals, scholars, teachers, and students who would not normally be accessible from your fixed school location. Worldwide e-mail allows individuals on your network to talk with individuals not physically located in the school environment."

With a WAN in place, students are limited only by their imaginations and chutzpah to directly access experts who previously could only be contacted by either reading their written published words or through the development of a fortuitous correspondence.

The Internet and its capabilities are becoming more and more well known as individuals, schools, and businesses for its marvelous information and communication benefits adopt it. By implementing a WAN, it is, as McLuhan felt, the ease of access by the user (in this case, our majors) who dramatically benefit when a new technology is made available to all at each workstation.

Aside from the marvels of communication technology that a WAN would offer, how else does one justify the expense in networking a television studio, audio studio, edit bays and non-linear editing bays to a computerized desktop publishing computer lab?

It has always been the duty of a university to prepare students for the new challenges they will face as they emerge from the cloistered environment of a hall of learning into the practical realities of the outside community. So, how then (and why) is multimedia networking being used by the industries to which our students hope to gain employment?

For media companies, realtime video, digital images and multimedia content are the raw materials that must be transported around the corporate LAN in order for the TV shows, movies and video games we play to be produced. Media companies such as Disney, Time Warner and GTE's Entertainment Network have streamlined their production costs by turning to computer hardware for animation and digital effects. In the process, they have come to rely on high-speed networking (Friefer).

As the artists, executives and customers of these companies begin to demand real-time video and sound over the corporate LAN and even the public network, the need for individuals who have been exposed to and studied such types of networking of multimedia components will become a highly sought commodity. Students who have been able to operate within this paradigm will be equipped to thrive in the corporate industry, while learning many valuable educational tools (Koschman 105).

Why is the investment of networking a media studies center a good educational investment? Multimedia systems allow students to go from a spectator role to one where they can choose the material they view, the sounds they hear, the movies that play on their computer screen, and therefore the educational content that is presented to them. Studies involving the cognitive flexibility theory suggest that non-linear type information presented through hypertext and multi-media more closely emulates they way human cognition functions, that is, jumping from idea to idea as necessary rather than in a linear straight line approach most commonly found in reading linear text. Not unlike weaving knowledge in a web-like structure, students seem to learn and achieve well in this non-linear, cognitive flexibility atmosphere (Jacobsen, Mishra, Kolar 272).

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Rather than the teacher being the provider of information in a pedagogical approach, multimedia provides opportunities for just in time learning as well as collaborative learning and experiential learning. These new learning techniques give the students the opportunity to create presentations, learning units, or tutorials that are then viewed by other students for critique and comment. This new student-centered way of learning provides more than just a new and dynamic way for students to explore and learn a new topic.

With the student selecting the information, collecting the information from a variety of reference sources, and preparing the presentation, a student can learn more about a particular subject while acquiring highly sought after decision-making research, and technical skills.(Jonassen & Wang 7). Presentations can include different multimedia elements - graphics video, and sound - created using different technologies, such as laser disks, CD-ROM images, camcorders, and digital cameras. Several successful examples of student-based teaching are available on the Web. (Koschmann 219). See KIDS VIEWZ home page

Similar to student-centered teaching, collaborative learning employs techniques which focus on a group of students who become the providers of information, creating a presentation as a class project (or for instance, an entry in the Annual Thinkquest Contest)

and presenting the project to other groups of students for comment and critique. For example, project teams in a communication's class can be set up to create presentations about each system of communication. This approach promotes student-centered learning and builds team skills (Koschmann 105). Once Multi-media networking is in place, students and teachers can even move into the authoring role with more advanced systems, creating their own programs and projects using sound, graphic, and video tools. Networked multimedia systems create opportunities for team projects, collaboration, and the widespread and more cost-effective use of technology. With hypermedia software tools and learning system software, computer-aided education can be tailored to suit a particular student, a group of students' needs, or specific teacher goals. Teachers can guide and customize a student's learning path. Varying levels of instruction can be defined, allowing students to move to more advanced levels as they progress.

Basic Equipment

At the most basic level, multimedia systems can consist of a computer equipped with a CD-ROM drive, running encyclopedia-type CD-ROM offerings enhanced by graphic images, sounds, and video clips.

Depending on the level of complexity of a department's needs and its planning constraints, different levels networking can be installed.

Any text, audio, or visual image that can be stored, manipulated, and retrieved can be utilize by a multimedia system. Traditional magnetic storage devices, such as high-density floppy disks and large capacity hard drives, are used for text and graphics. Audio, animation, and motion images are usually stored on laser videodisks or CDs. Furthermore, commercially produced CD's with an array of multi-media offerings can be utilized by the students from simple encyclopedias offering video, animation, and audio clips, to more professional software such as Director which allows students to produce this same multimedia themselves.

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What Multimedia Equipment Do We Need?

As mentioned previously, many of the necessary tools to construct and author multimedia are already at hand in a Communication Arts/RTF or Instructional Technology department, saving the university or school district many dollars in the start-up of a WAN utilizing multi-media. Most of these departments have in place already the requisite microphones, vcrs, cameras (field and studio) required to produce multimedia. Combing these with the authoring software necessary to digitilize the information is the next step in producing multimedia. Other components might include: a CD-ROM player, a videodisc player, a microphone,a voice synthesizer, an audio digitizer, a digital video camera, a color printer, a digital scanner all connected to a workstation.

The components necessary to network the desktop publishing lab with the media studies rooms would generally include typical networking equipment: several hubs, connections to the internet, net-work interface cards for each station, twisted pair copper wiring, or an ISDN connection or the more advanced optic fiber cabling (or a combination of both as was used successfully by the Pflugerville ISD), a server with at least 64MB RAM and one or more hard drive with 2GB, plus a CD-ROM drive 4X. Additionally the server should have a multimedia audio/sound card and video card with SVGA capability and a large 17" or greater monitor, with additional sound speakers, and finally the software necessary to supply to supply each work station.

For more specific equipment lists, see separate proposal.

Multimedia projects executed over a WAN allow:

students to employ a wider range of media and technology tools teams to include heterogeneous participants from different classrooms,

age levels, and cultural groups

projects to mimic workplace demands, based on the need for problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, planning, revision, and reflection from team members in distant locations

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Collaboration and team-building skills are stressed in this environment, as participants contribute to group projects from their desktops - storing or presenting graphics, ideas, or other pieces of information on the topic at hand on the network.

The incorporation of sounds, graphics, and animation, as well as the resources of the Internet and the wide-area network motivate students to perform more thorough research, to think more deeply about their audience to select the appropriate research findings, and to more actively question and critique others' contributions. (Jacobsen et.al 255).

LAN and WAN networks can facilitate the storage or retrieval of multimedia information on a single workstation, multiple workstations within the classroom, multiple workstations in remote classrooms, or servers located in other schools.

According to the Smart Valley Guidebook,

"Advanced WAN applications allow schools to provide all the benefits of multimedia-enhanced learning previously mentioned, with the additional capabilities provided by wider access to tools and project participants." Multimedia offerings designed in your school can include presentations on a networked computer via video conferencing applications, utilizing technologies and tools drawn from anywhere your WAN has access. The World Wide Web and the Internet provide a wealth of software tools, research content, and multimedia applications which can be incorporated in classroom activities through the WAN.

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Works Cited

Annual Editions: Mass Media 1999-2000. Connecticut: McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Folkerts,J; Lacy,S.; Davenport,L, The Media in Your Life. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.

Friefer, Jacob. ATM Networking for Media Companies

Gross, Lynne. Telecommunications. Madison,Wi: Brown & Benchmark,1997.

"Guide for Networking K-12 Schools",

Jacobsen, Michael; Mishra Punyashloke; Kolar, Christopher, "Learning with Hypertext Learning Environments: Theory, Design, and Research." Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia May 1995

Jonassen,D.H. and Wang,S. "Acquiring structural knowledge from semantically structured hypertext." Journal of Computer based Instruction, 20(1), 1-8.

Koschmann, Timothy. CSCL: Theory and Practice of an Emerging Paradigm. New Jersey: Earlbaum, 1996.

Littlejohn, Stephen. Theories of Human Communication. Belmont, Ca: Wadsworth, 1996.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Message. New York: Doubleday. 1968.

Smart Valley Technical Guide for Schools.

What is video mainstreaming?

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