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1. Signature
Page
2. Restatement
of Sabbatical Purpose
On my application,
I stated, "I
will spend my sabbatical researching and creating web-based
multimedia presentations to enhance my history classes". The purpose of my sabbatical
was to educate myself in web-based multimedia to the point
where I could create and deploy at least four original multimedia
units for my courses.
3. Restatement
of Objectives
The objectives
as listed in my application were to:
a. Obtain appropriate
materials for creating original multimedia units to enhance
my history classes,
b. Improve
my skills in creating multimedia for on-line delivery,
c. Create
at least four original multimedia history units of at least
five minutes each, and
d.
Incorporate each of those units, plus additional public-access
multimedia content, into the web pages for my history classes.
4. Description
of Activities
a. Obtaining Materials
I deliberately
decided not to work in a particularly linear fashion, but
rather read, research and create all at the same time (as
my log of hours shows). The trickiest
part proved to be collecting materials. Copyright issues
were important, so I had to find not only materials appropriate
to my pedagogical goal but items I had a right to use.
Hours were spent on researching the copyright and permissions
policies of each source of material. Some public-domain
collections insisted on being cited in my presentations, others
requested but did not require such an attribution. I
had to develop an organized file of printed "contracts"
in order to make sure that the "conditions of use"
were being met in all cases.
b. Improving my skills
Part of the initial
work also involved choosing an output format. After
reading manuals for three competing multimedia systems (WindowsMedia,
RealMedia, and QuickTime), I decided to use the QuickTime
format only. The reasons were many. WindowsMedia
I rejected as soon as I discovered that the encoder required
not only purchase of software, but the use of a PC.
Several years ago, one could encode WindowMedia on free software
using a Mac. The combination of Microsoft charging for
the encoding software (the other competitors do not) and insisting
I use a Windows platform sent me running the other way.
RealMedia was a good alternative. Its based was the
markup language named SMIL (Sychronized Multimedia Integration
Language), which seemed to offer a highly flexible method
of putting together presentations. Plus, I was already
familiar with RealAudio, having recorded most of the sound
clips for my online History 111 (Modern U.S.) class in that
format.
However, between
the time I conceived this sabbatical and the time I began
working, RealMedia's quality for web-based delivery deteriorated
to an unacceptable degree, with no sign that there would ever
be improvement. I had been receiving on-going complaints
from students. There were problems with the quality
of both audio and video on the few RealMedia items I had assigned.
When I attempted to play clips on the presentation computer
in my classroom at San Elijo, the audio quality was execrable.
In the summer of 2003, I began converting every audio file
I used to QuickTime.
QuickTime, unlike
WindowsMedia, seemed determined to both preserve quality and
cross-platform compatibility. One example was
its workaround for Internet Explorer, Microsoft's browser,
which had evolved deliberately to make trouble for QuickTime.
Apple responded with code that developers could use to make
sure that QuickTime multimedia played without a problem from
within Explorer.
The decision to
use QuickTime made my learning curve for techniques more focused.
I learned to use iMovie and QuickTime Pro for conversion and
editing tasks on the "movies" I created for three
of the units. The book QuickTime for the Web
became a well-worn tome. I spent much time at Apple's
QuickTime website, and even looked at the Developer pages
(much of which was far too technical for me). Gradually
I discovered that everything SMIL could do QuickTime could
also do, if I had the knowledge and the right software.
And the final quality was much superior, even if it created
somewhat larger file sizes. I eventually discovered that the
reason had to do with the codecs (compression/decompression
modes) available for QuickTime as opposed to those available
for Real. It wasn't that RealMedia didn't have a wide
variety of codecs, it was just that for some reason I found
the array far more difficult to understand than those used
by QuickTime. It is, in fact, entirely possible that
the difference in quality I perceived in my early work with
Real may have been attributable solely to my misunderstanding
of the codecs. By the time I realized that possibility,
however, I was already committed to QuickTime. (That's
what I get for being a non-technical practitioner in a technical
field.)
There were some
problems with selecting QuickTime as my sole output format,
however. Much of the material I found was in Real format
or, in the case of American Memory's quality audio files,
WAV format. I discovered that I could use screen-shot
programs, such as SnapzPro X or Screen Movie Recorder, to
capture Real-formatted material and convert it to QuickTime.
I also spent much time learning QuickTime Pro, gradually discovering
it was fairly cumbersome for doing routine tasks such as adding
subtitles. So I learned to use iMovie, which was more friendly
in this regard but has its own bugs.
Some of the techniques
I learned were the result of focusing on ADA compliance.
I used the NCAM website (http://ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia/developer/index.php)
to discover ways to make content more accessible to students
with disabilities. This meant learning how to caption QuickTime
movies, so that audio-impaired students could have an analagous
experience. Doing this gave me further awareness into
the ways in which all my on-line material could be improved
for better accessibility.
5. Contribution
to District
7.
Documentation of Leave