Multimedia man: Hall Davidson of the Discovery Educator Network chats with District Administration's Senior Features Editor Angela Pascopella about multimedia and mashups.Hall Davidson, a director of the Discovery Educator Network, has always known the power of media in academics. As a rookie math teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District The Los Angeles Unified School District (the "LAUSD") is the largest (in terms of number of students) public school system in California and the second-largest in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. in the 1970s, during a math teacher shortage, he and three other teachers created a live, interactive television show, called "Homework Hotline," answering math and language arts language arts pl.n. The subjects, including reading, spelling, and composition, aimed at developing reading and writing skills, usually taught in elementary and secondary school. questions for students. It eventually won an Emmy award Emmy award Annual presentation for outstanding achievement in U.S. television. Its name is taken from the nickname “immy” for the image orthicon, a television camera tube. . He and another teacher also created 90 episodes of a middle school math curriculum for teachers, named "Video Mathematics," covering math lessons for every day of the school year. In 1984, he became advisor of Instructional Media Services at KLCS-TV, a Los Angeles Unified School District station, and handled staff development for K12 instructors. Then just two years later, the state of California recognized the potential of multimedia and pushed teachers and educators to start applying technology to class work. So Davidson ran statewide technology training for teachers to help them assimilate technology into lessons. "Those of us who implemented the project recognized that media making was a tool that K12 teachers could use," he recalls. LA Unified also implemented video making classes, using Davidson's expertise, and started the Video in the Classroom awards to encourage K12 students to make videos for school projects. In 1990, Davidson became director of Education Television Services at KOCE-TV, at Coast Community College District, which includes three California colleges, overseeing K12 instructional programming. Four years later, he started a 10-year stint directing the California Student Media and Multimedia Festival, which was created in 1965 by what is now the California School Librarian Association. It started as a film festival for students to show off their high tech projects. It soon morphed into featuring any kind of video or multimedia project. Davidson was early to recognize the power of media in schools. "The impact was clear in terms of what you could do," he recalls. "And to create a resource that could reach hundreds of thousands of kids was really clear." Now Davidson is overseeing partnerships and projects at Discovery Educator Network, a global community of educators who are enthusiastic about digital media and want to collaborate with others. Davidson will help lead the way for more educators to participate in online communities where they can share resources, lesson plans, and information through wikis See wiki. , blogs or Web sites, including Discovery Education's unitedstreaming.com program, a 24/7 online digital video clip A short video presentation. library for educators. We recently caught up with Davidson to gauge where multimedia stands in classrooms today and in the future. DA: What are the biggest trends in multimedia in K12 districts today? Davidson: I would say one trend is the acknowledgement of multimedia as a valid means of expression. Teachers and students can integrate media into the curriculum in an online environment. Teachers will create a product, like a PowerPoint presentation in earth science for sixth-graders or use a Google Earth A 3D mapping program from Google that covers the entire globe from satellite images. Requiring a download for Windows, Mac and Linux desktops, a street address can be searched, and the views can be zoomed down to the individual building all the way up to a satellite's view of the globe. site with imbedded imbedded, adj See embedded. images on Yosemite [National Park in California], and not just have to be in a classroom or at a [multimedia] festival. They can create it at home. A teacher with a tablet PC (1) A tablet computer environment from Microsoft that is based on an enhanced version of Windows XP. Designed to function more like a portable writing tablet than previous tablet-based computers, it includes handwriting recognition as well as the ability to retain handwritten words can create a video using color and music and when he or she is done, can convert it to an [Adobe] Flash document and students can go online to see it. That exists now in a product called Cosmeo. corn [Discovery Channel's online homework help service A homework help service is a company, organization, or web-site that provides tutors specifically for assisting students with their homework. Some homework help services charge a fee, but most are free. ]. DA: What are the greatest challenges/obstacles of multimedia in schools today? Davidson: A great challenge is a teacher's understanding of effective multimedia use. They are not resisting it, but if you never used a computer to edit videos before and you've been teaching for 10 years, you might feel, "Why learn new tricks?" But that's what Discovery can do--it can provide teacher training on that level, the appropriate uses for it in the classroom, and show other teachers across the nation who are using it and saying, "Here's how I use it and how easy it is to do it." Every year it gets easier to teach new teachers. From the first group [I taught] at Golden West College five or six years ago to the last group, it was night and day as far as the ability of teachers to grasp the concepts and do multimedia work. California requires technology proficiency of its credentialed teachers, such as knowing beyond e-mail and spreadsheets. Students just coming out of high school now know how to do that. Not everyone could even click and drag Using a pointing device, such as a mouse, to latch onto an icon on screen and move it to some other location. When the screen pointer is over the icon of the object, the mouse button is clicked to grab it. The button is held down while the object is moved ("dragged") to its destination. five or six years ago. DA: Mashups, which are Web sites or applications that combine content from more than one source, are being used in schools today. Can you further explain mashups? Davidson: One of the things we did is that we recognized early that there was a kind of paradigm shift A dramatic change in methodology or practice. It often refers to a major change in thinking and planning, which ultimately changes the way projects are implemented. For example, accessing applications and data from the Web instead of from local servers is a paradigm shift. See paradigm. . You can make a good video without a video camera using mashups. There are mashup environments, such as the authoring environments of Apple's iMovie [video editing software Video editing software is application software which handles the editing of video sequences on a computer. It usually includes the ability to import and export video, cut and paste sections of a video clip, and add special effects and transitions; and it sometimes includes the ], or Windows Movie Maker [for digital home movies], or Adobe Premiere Elements Adobe Premiere Elements is a video editing software application for non-linear video editing, published by Adobe Systems. It is a scaled-down version of the professional-level Adobe Premiere Pro, and is optionally bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements. [to create and share home movies]. In a classroom, if you have a media asset like a series of still photographs on the westward expansion, for example, you can turn that into a video with narration and music, or video clips. There are other places online where mashups can be made. And unitedstreaming.com allows you to put that into a video production. It's a place where content is freed up for editing by teachers and/or students. It's a fee service so a district or a school site can get a license and any teacher in that district or school can use it. There are some state licenses, such as in Kentucky, where every teacher in the state could use it. The first online mashup site was KitZu.org [which was created four years ago and allows users to find a kit for the appropriate grade, research a topic, and build a video or media project]. Copyright law allows a person to use almost anything that is legally acquired. Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, section 8 clause 8, places two things higher in importance than property rights: one is the oppressed op·press tr.v. op·pressed, op·press·ing, op·press·es 1. To keep down by severe and unjust use of force or authority: a people who were oppressed by tyranny. 2. and the other is education. So a teacher can take environmental images from Time magazine, for example, scan them, and have students in class do a video project on the environment, as an example. Educational institutions are now beginning to apply the provisions of fair use to video mashups. KitZu.org and unitedstreaming. com have the ability to download a clip, pull it into an authoring environment, like iMovie, and create your own version of that video. Rather than watch a classic film presentation where you sit and watch it, you create. You can download the video, strip out the narration, then change the order of the video clips and create something, like a kid's travel ad as to where to go on vacation. "We're cool, we're stellar," can be voiced over. You're creating. And you're using a video that's already there. You want the ability to create content, not just passively accept content. It's repurposed and thrown all together. DA: Can you offer a few examples of mashups and how they relate to multimedia in the classroom? Davidson: A great one was on Stonehenge. This kid used a collection of several videos and allegedly 'solved' the mystery of Stonehenge. Essentially, the kid pieced together a history of the place, hypothesizing that a series of tribal units built it over a long period of time. Basically, each group added to the place for different reasons. He had some basis for all his conclusions and probably was relying on previous hypotheses. He took visuals from different sources and created his own content. He used animations that were from other sources, maybe a PBS PBS in full Public Broadcasting Service Private, nonprofit U.S. corporation of public television stations. PBS provides its member stations, which are supported by public funds and private contributions rather than by commercials, with educational, cultural, show, and information from the BBC BBC in full British Broadcasting Corp. Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. . The piece was wonderful. He used classical music as a sound track to add authority and narrated it with an English accent. In another project, a kid took old footage of WWII WWII abbr. World War II WWII World War Two , stock footage, and mixed that with the WWII Medal of Honor Medal of Honor highest American military decoration for wartime gallantry. [Am. Hist.: Misc.] See : Bravery winners in his own community. It was an effective look at people who joined the U.S. Army while their families were in internment internment, in international law, detention of the nationals or property of an enemy or a belligerent. A belligerent will intern enemy merchant ships or take them as prize, and a neutral should intern both belligerent ships that fail to leave its ports within a camps in California during WWII. The best [mashup projects] are done in high school where students take video classes that teach them innovation, but the most energetic are found in middle school. Primary grade mashups tend to use the most original material. One elementary school elementary school: see school. teacher in Desert Sands, Calif., did a project on worms. The kids and teacher used artwork like the Worma Lisa [in lieu of the Mona Lisa Mona Lisa La Gioconda, da Vinci’s enchanting portrait. [Ital. Art: Wallechinsky, 190] See : Beauty, Lasting Mona Lisa enigmatic smile beguiles and bewilders. [Ital. ] and General Wormington [in lieu of General George Washington] traveling across the Delaware River Delaware River River in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, U.S. Formed by the junction of its eastern and western branches in southern New York, it flows about 405 mi (650 km) to empty into the Atlantic Ocean at Delaware Bay. Navigable to Trenton, N.J. , and included live pictures of worms and of "talking" worms. They mashed up all that in a single video. It's great. They were mashing up their own work and not the work of others. DA: What is the rationale for students repurposing content, other than it being fun? Davidson: It goes back to the Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills report of 1991. It said that in order for kids to work as productive citizens in the current environment they need to be able to use technology, to work together and have organizational skills. Video making does all those things. The working world of the 21st century demands having the ability to find meaningful resources, as opposed to junk resources, and having information literacy Several conceptions and definitions of information literacy have become prevalent. For example, one conception defines information literacy in terms of a set of competencies that an informed citizen of an information society ought to possess to participate intelligently and and becoming information literate. And schools need to have curriculum goals that acknowledge these newly important resources. Mashups are a nice way to kill all those birds with one stone. The work from some of the teachers is absolutely heroic. And they're not getting pressure to do it. It's certainly not mandated under the No Child Left Behind law and it's certainly not in the state standards. They're doing it because they know it works for their kids. The students of today are not text-based learners. They come from game and TV environments. And if they come to school and you just give them books, that's not the way to keep them liking school. DA: What are the educational benefits of mashups? Davidson: Learning in general is better when kids are creating content. You're at the highest level of taxonomy taxonomy: see classification. taxonomy In biology, the classification of organisms into a hierarchy of groupings, from the general to the particular, that reflect evolutionary and usually morphological relationships: kingdom, phylum, class, order, in education, which is to be able to synthesize To create a whole or complete unit from parts or components. See synthesis. information, when you have such an understanding of content that you are able to create it. DA: Any cons you can offer on using mashups in schools, either for students or for administrators? Davidson: The cautions are that you want to make sure kids stay on task. Kids will wander. You have to make sure they stay on the curriculum goal. And it does take time to create mashups. If you're a teacher, be prepared to stay after school because kids will want to stay [to finish projects]. Some projects can be done in one class period or they can last a full semester. If you want to have the satisfaction of creating something quickly, you can finish a project in one classroom period or over a week. DA: Is this a realistic form of multimedia now? Davidson: That was certainly our goal--to have it used in every classroom, and our goal was to have it in every workstation in every school. It can be done. They are good alternatives to text-based learning. You see what's happening in the real world and you'll notice it's the way to go. I was watching the Jay Leno Jay Leno (born April 28, 1950) is an Emmy-winning American comedian, writer who is best known as the current host of NBC television's long-running variety and talk program The Tonight Show. Biography Leno was born in New Rochelle, New York. [Tonight] talk show recently. The last time I saw the show it was with Johnny Carson
Edited by Angela Pascopella CAREER FACTS 1978-1984 High and middle school teacher at Los Angeles Unified School District 1984-1990 Advisor of Instructional Media Services at KLCS-TV at Los Angeles Unified School District 1990-2005 Director of Education Television Services at KOCE-TV, a PBS station, at Coast Community College District in California 2000-2005 Teacher at Golden West College, Huntington Beach Huntington Beach, city (1990 pop. 181,519), Orange co., S Calif., on the Pacific coast, across from Santa Catalina Island, in an oil-producing area; inc. 1909. It manufactures aerospace vehicles, aircraft parts, optical instruments, and heat transfer equipment. , Calif. June 2005 Director, Discovery Educator Network RESOURCES ccMixter www.ccmixter.org Discovery Education, www.unitedstreaming.com Eye:Spot www.eyespot.com Findsounds www.Findsounds.com Flickr www.flickr.com JumpCut  This article or section is written like an .Please help [ rewrite this article] from a neutral point of view. Mark blatant advertising for , using . www.Jumpcut.com Library of Congress www.loc.gov Pics4learning www.Pics4learning.com |
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