MS Multimedia Skills | MS Academics | Middle School | The American School in Japan

Multimedia Skills Course Overview
Middle School, The American School in Japan

 

Teacher: Derrel Fincher                                                                    Fall Semester, 2000

 

Course Goals:

Multimedia Skills is a one-semester course for students who feel comfortable with the basics of technology, such as taught in the MS Tech Skills course, and want to go further in understanding how to use the computer to present their ideas in a multimedia format. Students will develop skills with graphic images (both scanned and from digital cameras), sounds (including sounds they record as well as sounds from other sources), and bringing these together to create presentations and web pages. Themes that will run through the course are: 1) the ethics involved in using material from other sources and creating and posting content to the web, and 2) learning how to find help from help screens, manuals, peer helpers and expert helpers. Students are expected to be leaders in technology in the school.

Major topics:

Graphics: Students will learn basic skills for manipulating and editing scanned and digital camera images. This includes being able to create composite images, as well as knowing how to prepare images for use in web pages. We will work primarily with bit mapped images such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG.

Audio: Students will learn basic skills for creating and working with sound files, and learn how to use these to enhance their work. The primary sound file formats will be Windows WAV files and MP3 files.

Video: If time permits, students will work with video and put together a short video presentation.

Web Pages: Students will learn the basic skills of putting together linked pages using FrontPage 2000. Although HTML is not a major part of this course, students will become familiar enough with it to read the source code for a page and have general understanding of what the more common commands do.

Resources

The class is held in the Technical Resource Center, and students will be expected to use those resources, as well as program manuals, help files, Internet sites, peer helpers, and others. The Multimedia Skills course web site is asij.ac.jp/ms/mmedia.

Assessment

Evaluation will be based on projects, quizzes, out-of-class work, and class participation. The projects are the major part of the grade and these will be evaluated on the processes the student uses to create them, the thought put into the project, the final product, and how well it is presented. When a project is a group effort, students will also be assessed on how well they work with the other members of the group.

Procedures and Policies

Class time occasionally may not be sufficient for completing the work in the class and it will be assigned for completion by the next class. Students will be expected to come to the TRC on their own time to finish, but the time required should not ordinarily exceed 30 minutes between two class sessions. (Students may take the work home if they happen to have appropriate resources.) Students will be expected to make up any missed work unless they have an extended absence, in which case I will work with the student to appropriately modify the assignments. Students are free to contact me at school or at home.

Specific Expectations of Accountability

Students are expected to behave ethically at all times. Specific issues in ethics include knowingly infringing on others intellectual property and intentionally creating work that is not suitable for our web site. Students are expected to treat others in the class with respect at all times.

 

                                                           Student’s Name:____________________________

                                                                            Date:____________________________

Multimedia Skills

 

Please sign below indicating that you have read and understood the information contained in this course overview and return it to Mr. Fincher by September 8, 2000.

Student Signature:                                                                                 _____________________________________

Parent Signature:                                                                                   _____________________________________

Feel free to provide an E-mail address(es) if you wish as using E-mail will bypass “telephone tag”. Please indicate who will receive the E-mail if it isn’t obvious from the address.

E-mail:________________________________________________

E-mail:________________________________________________

Student’s E-mail:_________________________________________

Is there anything you would like me to know about your middle-schooler, or any other comments you would like to make? If you prefer, you may E-mail directly to me.