| Computer access:
Coordinating large student projects around technology resources poses
two broad categories of challenges. The first is access. Our schoolwide
computer resources are in high demand. Consequently, we have developed
strategies for anticipating and communicating changing technology needs
and coordinating access to resources in our school. Production knowledge: The second category of challenges is learning what to use and how to use it. For creating a CD-ROM like Fading Footprints, several kinds of applications and a couple of pieces of hardware are essential if you want to produce an appropriately sophisticated product that can be viewed on any relatively current computer—Mac or PC. These include: A web authoring application such as Netscape Composer or Mozilla (free), Dream Weaver, Page Maker, or MSWord (if you want to keep things very familiar as we did)—or a program such as Adobe Acrobat that works with a free reader that you can include on your CD: When making CDs, it is essential to collect all the files and folders of media into one master folder on one computer before linking them all together through indexes or other structural elements. This prevents document links from being interrupted when transferring to CD. A CD burner with included software: These are relatively cheap, about $150.00, and usually come with the required software. Some things to keep in mind about CDs that are intended to be readable on both Apples and PCs: there are some naming and formatting issues. All file and folder names on CDs should be written with MS DOS names—eight or fewer letters or numbers in the name with no spaces or other characters permitted except for the underscore character ( _ ). The CD should be formatted using the ISO 9660 format. Otherwise it will only be readable on either Macs or PCs depending on which was used to make it. Scanners and photo editing software: We use Adobe Photodeluxe for most of our photo editing needs. It is simple enough for kids to become adequate users in a few lessons and it is also a great introduction to more sophisticated editors like Photoshop. A digital camera: A camera is optional as long as student produced artwork can fit on a scanning bed. We’ve had good luck with Sony Mavica cameras as many models shoot on floppy disks making picture downloading easier. Video software and hardware: The rule of thumb here is keep it simple. On the PC side, consider consumer products made by Pinnacle Systems (DV Studio). On the Mac side use iMovie. Compression: As you prepare videos for CD you will notice that most of the software allows users to export video to file types for different media including CD-ROM. For those with iMovie, the default CD format is actually not a very good choice. By choosing the EXPERT option, users can select alternative formats. The two I recommend are Cinepak (320x240; millions of colors; 15 frames per second) if you anticipate that people may view your product on older computers, and Sorenson (320x240; millions of colors; 15 frames per second). If you mightcwant to hang your CD on the web, use the iMovie web default setting which creates a small video frame but has excellent clarity. Audio software and hardware: To record voice and prerecorded music for your CD, consider using the audio functions of your video software and then exporting the video as a sound file: AIFF on Macs or Wave on PCs. It may be necessary to export the video to a QuickTime format (.mov) first and then to use an application like QuickTime Pro to re-export it as a sound file. The new sound file can be set to play as a link or at the opening of pages on your CD. Reproduction: Consider a strategy for reproducing your CDs. Before we purchased a CD duplication machine, we had a lot of elves working in the back of our classrooms using CD burners that produced one disk at a time. To make 125 CDs in this manner takes the elves about a week. |