Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers

Session 6: Integrating Technology
Chair: Howard Goldbaum

Construction, Consumption and Creation - the Convergence of Medium and Tool
Anders Kluge, University of Oslo (NORWAY)

To use the computer as both medium and tool has become a regular way to utilise it. This confronts the users with complicated situation, particularly in a case where they must handle consumption, construction and creation of multimedia material. The subject of this study is use of a special-purpose software and specially designed and adapted content used in project based learning in a secondary school. During the field trial the pupils are able to handle the complicated situation by applying a tool approach to use. The interaction design works to propel the constructive and creative activity by integration of functions to view, relate, and make material in one application. The focus on visualisation of elements in the software also led the pupils to spend a considerable amount of time on stylistic issues.

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Interactive Multimedia = Whatever Intermedia
Julainne Sumich, University of Aukland (NEW ZEALAND)

This paper offers a way of thinking about Interactive Multimedia practice as an integrated open-ended series of events in which the play between component parts produces an affect related to and distinct from those properties. Convergence of any mediums whatever, the data of people, words or things, gives rise to an intrinsic vitalism that is always assembling itself in relationship to the information around it.
In an attempt to activate a sense of the space between what informs this “affect” of media convergence and how it might be made visible the paper uses the architecture of the SINE website as a metaphor for investigating some sort of molecular flow along and between different streams of information.
SINE is the acronym for Science Intermedia Network Environment, an interdisciplinary digital research hub initiated in 1997 at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
It’s an environment inhabited by hubots from Fine Arts, Architecture, Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, Art History, Immunology, Film TV & Media Studies interested in the convergence of the arts and sciences. Its aim is to stimulate interdisciplinary thought applicable to collaborative and individual projects.

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Learning with Interactive Multimedia: Characteristics of its Impact in Three Different Environments
Corine Fitzpatrick and Michael Mucciardi, Manhattan College (USA)

Manhattan College, a medium sized undergraduate and graduate institution in Riverdale, New York City, recently received a technology grant ($2.0 million total) from the United States Department of Education to infuse technology into teaching and learning on the collegiate and K-12 teacher level. The design of Project TITAN (Transforming Instruction through Technology and Networking) reflects the use of multimedia technologies and networking as tools for teaching and learning. A mandate of the grant is to gain perspective on the effects of infusing multimedia technologies into teaching and learning and to explore the relationship between cognitive and metacognitive processing, and learning through multimedia and interactive multimedia.
This presentation will address three specific developments in the grant that became the focus of research efforts including: 1) multimedia-based curriculum design through collaborative teams meeting in real time and as virtual communities - involving educators from schools, faculty and students from the college - to reflect the infusion of technology as a tool for teaching and learning; 2) delivery of distance education using videoconferencing; and 3) development of the use of media (video analysis) in performance assessment.

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