Activity 3.1 – What is Multimedia

“Multimedia is an eerie wail as two cat’s eyes appear on a dark screen.

It’s a small window of video laid onto a map of India, showing an old man recalling his dusty journey to meet a rajah there…”

Tay Vaughan, 1998, Multimedia: Making it Work

Multimedia is understood to mean a product that is digitally constructed utilising and seamlessly integrating various media: text, graphics, images, video, animation and sound.

Multimedia enriches the user through medias and technologies with the intention of engaging people’s minds!

Initially the delivery of multimedia products was via CD-ROM, but the internet provided a global distribution system that changed the structure and style of the multimedia products.

High levels of interactivity are now achievable using a range of software that runs on almost any current desktop computer.

The future of multimedia will be even more challenging as a plethora of delivery systems and displays are marketed. Enhanced program material provided on digital television and internet information displayed on mobile phones are just two examples of new multimedia systems.

Our notion of multimedia needs to encompass all new forms.

How do you define multimedia in today’s e-Learning context? Compare this to the experiences with the Web 2.0 technologies and the issues raised in the Seely-Brown article.

Multimedia encompasses the wide range of delivery methods used to engage learners in the learning content. In the e-Learning context, multimedia is being used more often as it has become easier to develop and to integrate into learning as the tools and technological infrastructure to support it have become more accessible.

I’m not sure how to answer this question as I can’t remember what the Seely-Brown article was. But in my experience of Web 2.0 technologies, I would say that multimedia is increasingly present and used to get messages across in a more direct manner. For example, tracking back a few blogs, I discovered vokis and integrated one into a blog as a test. I then integrated one onto my homepage. Such tools as these can be used to give quick introductions or overviews and save the learner from having to read more chunks of text. It’s also colourful and attractive and hence engaging.