Chapter+3

Chapter 3 Outline: Why We Need Flexible Instructional Media

Traditional media (speech,text, and images) are inflexible because they can't reach every individual student frequently enough, the way that new, electronic media. Although, each medium has different communicative power (think of Dr. Martin Luther King's"I Have A Dream" speech and how different it is when you read it, listen to it, or watch it) -Mediums are not experienced equally []
 * Sound: Your brain's recognition networks have special modules for processing sound (inseparable from speech) in the auditory context. Click here to witness the power of sound
 * [[image:webkit-fake-url://35AD5773-27D7-48E5-B1B8-A7294416C0B4/Soundwave3_2.jpg caption="Soundwave3_2.jpg"]] Copy this link to view a photo of a sound wave.
 * Advantages: Speech is natural and expressive- direct voices can emphasize certain ideas through change in speed, tone, pitch, and physical expression
 * Limitations: It's easy to forget long and complex speeches (Transience- reliance on memory).
 * Light: Electromagnetic energy reflected by an object (text). The brain's similar cortex is selectively wired to object, motion, shape, and color. Text is //always// visible. reflected
 * Advantages: Provides for lasting records (history), reduces memory demands of speech, and helps people communicate.
 * Limitations: Lacks the expressiveness of speech and is bound by certain limitations (for example the differences in form: poetry, novel, dictionary, etc).
 * "Paintings . . . (are) so easily apprehensible. They're present all at once, unlike music, or language, with which you can lie to the common man merely because he may not remember what has just been and cannot know what is coming. . . . Painting is tranquil and appeals directly to heart and soul." (Novelist Mark Helprin, 1991, p. 284)
 * Images: Has increasing cultural prevalence.
 * Advantages: Images can communicate everything at once by offering immediacy, capturing the entirety of a scene, and conveying emotion and feeling to portray a mood literally.
 * Limitations: Governed by complex conventions which require training and certain knowledge to interpret. Images can't convey abstract, philosophical context nor can they explain or clarify information.
 * Overcoming the limitations of traditional media:
 * Most classrooms are dominated by text causing teachers to cater only to certain students on a routine basis.
 * There is other media that is more suitable for certain subject matter or content.
 * As teachers, we don't need //more// media (it is impractical considering time constraints), we need //better// media.
 * The power of digital media = flexibility
 * Can be presented as in any medium because the information is not embedded physically. For example, paint on a canvas vs. a code of numbers on a computer screen. Take this digitally reproduced version of Mona Lisa and compare it to the original: [[image:webkit-fake-url://F051F5BE-B167-473F-A4B4-DEBEDE4364FA/monalisa3_3.jpg caption="monalisa3_3.jpg"]] (copy the link to view)
 * Can be altered/edited
 * Can save and redisplay speech. text, or images
 * Versatile: Can use many forms simultaneously
 * Transformable: The same content can be displayed in multiple ways (web page, wiki, blackboard, etc)
 * Can be marked: "Tagged"
 * Can be networked: "Links"
 * Implications for educators:
 * Digital capacities to combine and transform speech, text, and images is more diversified and can accommodate for varied strengths and weaknesses.
 * Disabled students are the earliest to benefit
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