Why a Multimedia Inventory is Important for Instructional Designers

Preparing a multimedia inventory can be a tedious task but when done right, they often provide a comprehensive list of items in a website. If the table is structured adequately, it can help instructional designers identify different types of multimedia quickly and easily as well as help them note any revisions or missing files. The inventories are also a measure of good practice when developing web sites or pages and, as discussed in an online chat with a fellow classmate, should be started at the beginning stages of LMS development rather than accumulated at the end. Starting an inventory from the beginning of the process not only saves time but once the list has been compiled, the author or designer can remove any files from the list that are not used and also be able to list where in the process any copyright requests are taking place.

Relating to the SECTIONS Model

The inventory takes into consideration most of the SECTIONS model. In Vista, I am mainly targeting adults. Most of the content for the web writing portion of the course is text while some content for the usability design portion includes visual content – mainly imagery and videos. While deciding which types of multimedia to include, the SECTIONS model provided insight into what should or should not be added to the inventory. In sum, the questions I had to ask myself in relation to the model were: “Is this relevant to the instructional content?”, “Is it necessary?”, “Are there any accessibility issues to consider?” and “Is the media current?”

During this week’s group discussion, I realized that the use of screenshots may be a copyright issue; therefore, a decision has yet to be made on whether or not to use them. Nevertheless, they have been included in the inventory in the event they will be used. This copyright issue alone questions the costs, teaching and learning, and organizational issues of the SECTIONS (Bates & Poole, 2003) model. What is the cost of using a screenshot and is there a liability issue that creates a barrier for the organization or institution with its use? Do students really need this screenshot to get a point across? What are my alternatives – can I mimic the appearance or structure of a website and create my own imagery or is that a copyright issue as well? How long will it take for the original author to reply to a request for permission to use their work if no Creative Commons Licensing or other terms of use exist?

Although I favour interactivity in course content, I think it is more important to consider usability first, since there are more issues associated with the use of content. For this project, it is easy to miss identifying copyright permissions – definitely something that should not be overlooked.

Reference
Bates, A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A framework for selecting and using technology. In Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. New York: Wiley, John & Sons. Retrieved June 6, 2009 from UBC WebCT Vista: ETEC 565A.

For my digital story, I chose to use Scrapblog to present my Tour of Western Europe. Scrapblog is a site that intermingles scrapbooking with blogging. The result is a site where users can create albums using scrapbooking collage elements such as stickers, frames, backgrounds, and themes. This was a fun project to do but took longer than I expected for two reasons: 1) I have never used Scrapblog before and 2) it took forever to upload my 1-2mb photos to their website. The second reason could have been avoided if I performed automated resizing on the images in Photoshop to make the files smaller. However, it was probably a good thing that I attempted my time consuming task in order to understand how slow things may go for a non-Photoshop-type user. The perfectionist in me also had too much fun with layouts, often wanting to make sure photos were lined up well and that “nice looking” fonts went with the images.

Last summer, I placed the majority of my vacation photos from Europe on Picasa, a tool suggested in CogDogTools. While many of my photos in Picasa have captions, they are more like short descriptions than stories. Picasa also enables geotagging which places the location of the photo and the photographer at the time the photo was taken. For my story, I felt this was not necessary although it would have been a nice touch. In Scrapblog, rather than placing captions alone, I did my best to make mini stories to accompany each page of compiled pictures since the photographs themselves could tell stories of their own. Privacy is also another concern of mine so even though Scrapblog has my name on it, the album itself mostly contains imagery of landscapes, structures and artwork and only one photo of myself at the end wearing black, with sunglasses on, camera in hand, and hair tied up – how incognito. The one feature I do like about Scrapblog is that the link to my album can remain relatively private and I can choose who I would like to share it with. For the purposes of this assignment, the link remains public.

As I was creating my Scrapblog, I was fascinated by the amount of scrapbooking elements available yet at the same time, I began to think how the use of such elements by other users would mean that my scrapbook would not be completely original. There would be no way for me to upload my own “trinket” images. Nevertheless, Scrapblog allows users to drag, drop, crop, adjust, and edit their own photographs and images. Best of all, users can have their very own scrapbook, card or calendar printed out and shipped. Other features I like about Scrapblog are its Flash video capabilities, much like one would find with YouTube. Users can pause the presentation, see which slide the presentation is on and navigate to the previous or next pages at their own speed. The selection of music is adequate as well, but is not a necessary addition. Visual transitions are also available to the user to make the change from page to page more appealing. For educational purposes, I think Scrapblog would make a good digital storytelling tool for kids and teenagers.

Initially, I found it difficult to participate because I could not log into the wiki when I had the time to post earlier in the week. Not being able to log into the wiki sort of caused me to miss out on earlier discussion, which I could see as being a hindrance to using wikis for group collaboration in its initial stages. Apart from threaded discussion, the wiki was organized in a more linear fashion where I could click on a person’s name and follow one path of discussion related to a particular individual’s post. So while each post contributed to a larger discussion, they each contained their own “module” of information. Wikis seem to be more effective for collaboration in that way.

In our discussion, I found the ideas relatively easy to follow because the posts were brief, concise and individualized. I think if we had each posted by topic (e.g. use of Facebook, Twitter, bookmarking, etc.) instead of by individual student sightings, the discussions may have been more difficult to reply to and discussion may fizzle more quickly. Another advantage of group collaboration in a wiki is that users can create their own pages if the activity requires it. However, a disadvantage to this is that instead of having information contained all on one page, students would have to navigate to individual pages. One challenge to posting in a wiki is that without knowing the code that is different from HTML, it may take slightly longer to post.