TechKnowledge
RSSWalter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 11/01/2000
Seeing the Big Picture
With a media retrieval system, video can be wherever you need it. The Duchesne Academy in Houston, Texas, a private K-12 school for girls, has spared little expense to make technology happen for its students and faculty. A wireless network runs through the campus, and the middle- and high-school students carry laptops with wireless modems that allow them to check assignments and access the Net from any building or hallway. The library offers a rich collection of subscription databases and networks with other libraries. (See for yourself in the "Library" section of www.duchesne.org.) But Middle School Librarian Lana Miles reserves special praise for her school's media retrieval system.
A media retrieval system is a high-tech solution to a common hassle for librarians--maintaining and managing a collection of nonprint media, particularly videotapes. Duchesne Academy's system allows teachers to log in and schedule tapings and broadcasts of video programs for educational use over the school's video network. At the scheduled time, the system sends the broadcast to the classrooms. It's housed in a staff-only area in the library and consists of a dual Pentium II server, a "cage" of video cards, 10 VCRs, two laserdisc players, and two DVD players. It's controlled by Axis MC software produced by Tightrope Media Systems. Miles administers the system, which cost the school about $22,000. "I really like this system," she says. "I had seen other systems, and this one gives the teachers control of the actual broadcast."
Thus far, says Miles, Duchesne uses the system only for scheduling and broadcasting videos on tape, videodisc, or DVD. But new digital enhancements and products are now appearing on vendors' Web sites. The media software developer Vsoft, for example, has recently introduced a new version of its VideoClick software that lets schools manage collections of digital video files.
(For a diagram that describes how such a system works, visit www.vsoft.com/products/markets3.htm.)
Vsoft's software, with an interface that looks like a Jetsons-style VCR and monitor, allows video files to be sent over the Internet to students off campus for distance learning. It also gives teachers more control. For instance, instead of having students watch the entire film of Romeo and Juliet to answer questions about a few specific scenes, teachers have the option of "leaping" through a video document to specific portions. They can also attach a "metafile," such as a quiz or a group of study questions, to that segment of video. Teachers involved in distance learning can also videotape lectures for later broadcast. Students will be able to watch the completed video document from either a standard video monitor or a PC or laptop screen, and it can also be written to a CD-ROM disc and mailed to remote students.
Tom Ressler, assistant principal of Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo, CA, is looking favorably at VideoClick and similar products as he seeks out the most effective way to use a digital high school grant the state awarded his school. The school has boosted its network capacity for this very reason. "We want to have the ability to distribute media through our classrooms," says Ressler. He also likes the way that VideoClick allows instructors to customize students' viewing of video programming, adding metafiles without flouting copyrights. It's a great improvement, says Ressler, over the typical situation, in which teachers' ability to control the videos students see is limited to the fast-forward and rewind buttons.--Walter Minkel
Site of the Month
Solar System Webquest
www.monet.k12.ca.us/challenge/Teacher_Webpages/
OWStemigD/SolarSystemWebquest/
solar_system_webquest.htm
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Build a planet: Stemig's Webquest helps groups of three or four students create exhibits on the planets they've been assigned. The site instructs one student to design a poster of the planet and play the role of a travel agent, another to design and build a model of the planet, and the others to create an interactive display. The entire group then creates a slideshow using the KidPix graphics program. The Webquest site also includes a list of books on the solar system in the library, as well as appropriate Web sites.
Online for the first time: "Our school is in an extremely low-income area, and our kids don't have computers at home. So for them to get on the Internet was very exciting," says Stemig. "They had a great time, and I don't think they even realized they were learning."
Next quests: The third-grade project was a big success with the class that tried it, and Stemig, who was selected this year to be an Intel Corporation master teacher, will use it again with two third-grade classes. Media specialists interested in creating their own Webquests should take a look at Bernie Dodge's Webquest site at edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquest.html.
The Librarian's Internet
by Gail Junion-MetzGet Plugged in with Plug-Ins:
Five you need to know aboutWithout plug-ins, your Web browser may not be able to display interactive media or animations, play streaming audio or video files, or display government forms. Fortunately, you can download them free from the Web, and they install easily onto your computer. (The newer your Web browser, the better the chance that it already includes some plug-ins. But even the most recent versions don't include all the plug-ins you might need.)
To figure out which plug-ins are already installed on your computer, visit the plug-in test page created by McMaster University (Canada) at www.mcmaster.ca/cis/projects/spg2000/plugins.htm. Click on the sample files to see which plug-ins you have and which ones you'll need to download and install. Remember to virus-check every plug-in you download!
The Big Five
The five plug-ins listed below should be installed on every Net-connected computer in your library. They make it possible for your browser to display the multimedia and text files found on many Web sites, which your browser alone may not be able to handle.
Acrobat Reader 4.0, free version (Adobe Systems, Inc.)
Acrobat handles Portable Document Format (PDF) files, including federal and state tax forms and lots of classroom resource materials. Platforms: Windows 95/98/NT, Macintosh OS 7.1.2 and up. Browsers: IE 3 and up and Netscape 3 and up.
Shockwave Player 8/Flash Player 5, free version
(Macromedia, Inc.)
Shockwave handles interactive multimedia, graphics, and streaming audio. Flash handles animation and vector graphics. There are many educational Shockwave media files and age-appropriate Flash games on the Web. Make sure kids and teachers can access them! Platforms: Windows 95/98/NT/2000, Macintosh OS 8.1 and up. Browsers: IE 4 and up and Netscape 4 and up.
RealPlayer 8, free version (RealNetworks, Inc.)
proforma.real.com/real/player/player.html?src=down
loadr,000914rpchoice_c2_nite&dc=917916915
RealPlayer handles streaming audio (including live radio), streaming video (like the Survivor video clips), TV Webcasts (like Big Brother), animations, and multimedia presentations. Platforms: Windows 95/98/NT/2000, Macintosh 8.1 and up. Browsers: IE 4 and up and Netscape 4 and up.
Quicktime 4.1.2, free version (Apple Computer, Inc.
Quicktime handles video, sound, animation, graphics, text, music, and virtual reality. Many Web sites are now using Quicktime files to display videos. Platforms: Windows 95/98/NT, Macintosh OS 7.7.5 and up. Browsers: IE 3 and up and Netscape 3 and up.
Beyond the Basics
Once you have a good understanding of basic plug-ins, check out the following sites to locate plug-ins designed to handle more complicated programs--for instance, files that include 3-D animation and virtual-reality
Web sites.
CNET Download.com
download.cnet.com
To find a fairly comprehensive list of current plug-ins for your browser, type "browser plug in" into the search box, indicate whether you're using a PC or Mac and click "go." Downloading from there is easy.
Librarians: Dashing, Sexy
That horrible stereotype of librarians as spectacled old prunes stamping books still exists, but Erica Olsen has done something about it.
Olsen, 25, is a graduate student at the University of Michigan's School of Information in Ann Arbor. Despite her hour-and-a-half-long commute from school to her job as a library assistant at the Digital Sources Center of Michigan State University, in Lansing, she found time to put together a Web site called "Librarian Avengers" (www.librarianavengers.com) that went live earlier this fall.
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Olsen's site features a comic book that she illustrated and wrote for her mother, also a librarian, and a forthcoming section on "Things You Never Learned in Librarian School." The site even has a sexy edge: Terry Moore, a well-known comic book artist, has donated the use of his "Look It Up Girl," a pinup babe of a librarian growling, "Look it up." "We work in a profession where we're always having to prove ourselves," Olsen says. "I wanted a place where it was sort of presumed that librarians were awesome."
Can Government Be Fun?
Oh, elections. Yes, we know students fall asleep at the very mention of them. Students might just jump at the new onslaught of Web sites that make participating in the voting process fun and interesting, though.
Check out GenerationNet (www.generationnet.org). The site allows students to vote on real issues, like prescription drug costs, and submit votes immediately. Kids can even sign up to be "campus coordinators" of issue campaigns, if they like.
YourCongress.com (www.yourcongress.com) makes it easy for kids to write and submit letters to their local congressperson. Issues from the Kyoto protocol to the soft money debate are explained in easy-to-understand text. The site even reviews movies and television shows about Congress.
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Although http://www.whitehouse.net may have nearly the same name as the official White House Web site (www.whitehouse.gov), it's anything but. This spoof on the official White House Web site is definitely comedy, but it describes real ways to contact all the branches of the government.
Filtering Runs Rampant
The Digital Freedom Network (DFN), an online human rights group, recently ran a contest in which participants were encouraged to send in examples of unreasonable censorship with filtering software. The grand prize winner? A student who couldn't access his own high school's Web site because the library computer filtered sites that included the word "high." Babson Wong, a spokesperson for DFN, notes that the contest was started when DFN received an e-mail from a woman named Sherril Babcock, who tried to register her name with a Web site. The site turned her down, detecting the word "cock" in her name. Wong says that the site was ultimately unwilling to devote the resources necessary to right the mistake. "That's when we encouraged people to go out and find instances of unreasonable filtering," he says. To view full results, visit DFN's Web site, at dfn.org.
Native American Languages Link Up
Perhaps the most obvious sign of a culture's disappearance from society is the demise of its language. Late this fall, KidLink, an online concern that links different cultures by enabling its participants to write letters to each other in their own languages, set out to prevent that from happening to Native Americans with its new "Who Am I?" program. Odd de Presno, KidLink's executive director, says that KidLink's push to encourage Native American students to communicate in their own language might be the key to preserving the language for future generations. For more information, visit www.kidlink.org.
Finding Truth on the Web
With all the Web at their fingertips, it's no wonder students are more willing to turn to the Internet as a source of information than to a dusty old Encyclopedia Britannica. So how does an educator help his or her students to be smart about the reliability of information found on the Web? Otterbein College's (OH) Courtright Memorial Library may have solved the problem with its "Evaluating Web Sources" Web page (www.otterbein.edu/learning/libpages/subeval.htm). The page offers an outline-style course on how to tell if information is worth the Web page on which it's displayed. Otterbein's page manages to illustrate all the points it makes, too: a section about advocacy groups and their Web sites, for instance, allows you to click over to
www.peta-online.org, the Web site of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and to 
www.mtd.com/tasty, the Web site of People Eating Tasty Animals, also known as "PETA." Patti Rothermich, the reference business librarian for the library and creator of the page, says she thought of creating a reference guide out of "the fear that students were swallowing whole whatever they saw on the Web."
Rothermich notes that students seem to be heading to the library only after they've exhausted their Web options, although, she says, "we're still fighting that movement."
Testdrive
Sonic Desktop Software, P.O. Box 3205, Chatsworth, CA 91313-3205.
www.
Adding legal, customized music to multimedia projects hasn't always been an easy task, but SmartSound for Multimedia makes adding great music easier. SmartSound is a royalty-free library of pre-recorded music clips, supported by a user-friendly interface that helps you create a variety of soundtracks for your multimedia projects.
SmartSound consists of two modules, Maestro and Editor. In Maestro, you answer a few quick questions describing the music you'd like (style and length of track are some yardsticks to go by). You click the finish button and Maestro creates the music track. In Editor, you can tweak your Maestro creation or build your own music track from scratch. The Editor interface is intuitive and visual. You drag and drop "smart blocks" of sound into a linear timeline. SmartSound tells you if two musical segments don't go well together. You don't need to be a musician or know musical notation to create a great music track in either Maestro or Editor.
I installed SmartSound on a MAC G3 laptop and on a 300 megahertz Pentium II Windows machine without problems. I followed a quick tutorial and then, in less than four minutes, I created a music track, which I then exported to a PowerPoint presentation. SmartSound exports files in many formats, allowing your music to be used in PowerPoint presentations, video files, and even in Web pages.
A starter CD costs under $300 and includes a wide variety of music themes and sound effects. Additional themes, instruments, and effects are available separately.
