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

Teacher: Derrel Fincher 
2001-2002 School Year

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) and sounds (if time permits), and bringing these together to create presentations and web pages. Themes that will run through the course are: 1) Creating and managing information, 2) collaborating with others, 3) the ethics involved in using material from other sources and creating and posting content to the web, and 4) 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.

Web Sites: 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.

Collaboration: Students will collaborate with other students and improve their understanding of how to create joint projects. Collaboration may also occur with students in other classes or other schools or countries.

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.

Assessment

Evaluation will be based on projects, quizzes, out-of-class work, class participation and the ability to work independently. 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, 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. In order to earn an "A" or "A-" in the course, students will have to satisfactorily complete all course work as well as take photos at one school dance/social minimum, and take at least one picture suitable for putting on the Middle School home page.

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.

Cut Here

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Student’s Name:____________________________

                                                                            Date:____________________________

Multimedia Skills

 

Please sign below indicating that you have read and understood the information  in the course overview and return it to Mr. Fincher. 

Student Signature:                                                                                 _____________________________________

Parent Signature:                                                                                   _____________________________________

If there is anything you would like me to know about your middle-schooler, or any other comments you would like to make, please email them do me. (dfincher@asij.ac.jp)