The present investigation entitled "The WEB Page as an IT Learning Tool for CUM Students" is carried out at the "José Martí Pérez" University Center. It focuses on the design and implementation of a portable computer application for the program in the Broad Access modality, which guarantees the obtaining of information with quality, reliability and speed. It allows curricular flexibility in relation to the contents; using Adobe Photoshop to contribute to the graphical interface.
The computer application is designed taking into account the methodology for the creation of multimedia. In the structure of the software, the didactic categories (objectives, contents, methods, forms, means and evaluation) are taken into consideration, also making explicit the methodological indications to achieve in the teachers an efficient use of the didactic materials provided. This computer product was validated based on the criteria of experts and in its practical application, emphasizing its extensibility to other educational programs.
Development
Self-learning and distance training
The new information and communication technologies allow the creation of self-learning environments, due to the communication and information dissemination mechanisms that establish original forms of interaction between students and tutors and between students themselves.
Advantages of self-study and distance learning:
- Access to more current information, which increases the motivation of students and teachers. Familiarization of teachers and students with computer and communication technologies. Development of collaborations between students, teachers and administrators that leads to common interests and experiences regardless of the place, favoring the sense of belonging to one or more communities. Training for a more active acquisition of information and knowledge, with an increase in interaction in the educational process and easier access to primary sources of information. Capacity building reading, writing, locating information and posing and solving problems.
It seems clear that the immediate future of education at all levels is to improve its multimedia features, increasing the transmission capabilities of images, sound and video in real time.
What is a multimedia product?
Multimedia is the way of presenting information that uses a combination of text, sound, images, animation and video. The most common multimedia computer applications include games, learning programs and reference material such as this software.
Most multimedia applications include predefined associations known as hyperlinks, which allow users to move through the information in a more intuitive and interactive way.
Well-designed multimedia products allow the same information to be presented in multiple ways, using chains of associations of ideas similar to those used by the human mind. The connectivity that hypertexts provide means that multimedia programs are not just static presentations with images and sound, but an infinitely varied and informative interactive experience.
Multimedia applications are computer programs, which are usually stored on compact discs (CD-ROM or DVD). They may also reside on the World Wide Web (web pages). The linking of information through hyperlinks is achieved using special computer programs or languages.
Multimedia applications often require more memory and processing power than the same information represented exclusively in text. For example, a computer running multimedia applications must have a fast CPU (it is the electronic element of the computer that provides calculation and control capacity).
A multimedia computer (so-called which has the capacity to run multimedia applications) needs additional memory to help the CPU perform calculations and to allow complex images to be displayed on the screen, advanced sound and video cards, speakers and other types of hardware and software that facilitate the execution of audio, video and animations.
Visual elements
The image is an essential element of multimedia applications. The sharper and sharper an image and the more colors it has, the more difficult it is to present and manipulate on a computer screen. Photographs, drawings and other static images must be converted to a format that the computer can manipulate and present. Among those formats are bitmap graphics and vector graphics.
Bitmap graphics store, manipulate, and render images as rows and columns of small dots. In a bitmap graphic, each point has a precise place, defined by its row and column, just as each house in a city has a specific address. Some of the most common bitmap graphics formats are the Graphical Interchange Format (GIF), the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), and the Windows Bitmap (BMP).
Vector graphics uses mathematical formulas to recreate the original image. In a vector graph, points are not defined by a row and column direction, but by the spatial relationship they have to each other. Because the component points are not restricted to a particular row and column, vector graphics can reproduce images more easily, and they tend to provide a better image on most displays and printers. Vector graphics formats include Encapsulated Postscript (EPS), Windows Metafile Format (WMF), Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language (HPGL).
Obtaining, formatting, and editing video items requires special components and software. Video files can become very large, so they are usually reduced in size through compression, a technique that identifies groups of recurring information (for example, 100 consecutive black dots), and replaces them with a single information to save space in computer storage systems.
Some common video compression formats are Audio Video Interleave (AVI) in its second version, Quicktime and Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG or MPEG2). These formats can compress video files up to 95%, but they introduce varying degrees of blur to the images.
Sound Elements
Sound, like visual elements, has to be recorded and formatted so that it can be manipulated by the computer and used in presentations. Two common types of audio format are waveform files (WAV) and Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI).
WAV files store the sounds themselves, just like music CDs or audio tapes do. WAV files can be very large and require compression. MIDI files do not store sounds, but rather instructions that allow devices called synthesizers to reproduce sounds or music. MIDI files are much smaller than WAV files, but their sound reproduction quality is considerably lower.
Recently, audio formats with a high compression capacity have been incorporated, which has allowed the inclusion of important sound elements, both in multimedia products that are marketed on CD-ROM media and those that are hosted on the Web. Specifically, the MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3) format, developed in Germany by the Fraunhofer Institute, or Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA); Its algorithms work by eliminating sound frequencies that are not noticeable to the human ear, allowing the size of the audio file to be reduced to less than a tenth, with little loss of fidelity.
Organizational elements
The multimedia elements included in an application need an environment that leads the user to interact with the information and learn. Among the interactive elements are the top menus, small windows that appear on the computer screen with a list of instructions or multimedia elements for the user to choose. Scroll bars, which are usually located on one side of the screen, allow the user to move through a large document or image.
The integration of the elements of a multimedia presentation is reinforced by hyperlinks. Hyperlinks creatively connect the different elements of a multimedia presentation through colored or underlined text or a small image called an icon, which the user points with the cursor or pointer and activates by clicking with the Mouse.
Advantages and possibilities of using multimedia
The use of multimedia technology contributes to raising the quality of the learning process. On the one hand, by enabling the user to interact with a computer program to complement and reinforce learning; or as a reinforcement workshop where you can review to improve your performance in specific or general elements in an easy and simple way, since, unlike other visual forms of learning with multimedia products, you have the possibility to interact and experiment.
Undoubtedly, the use of these attractive and interactive multimedia materials can favor group and individual teaching and learning processes.
Some of his main contributions are the following:
Users are often highly motivated to use these materials, and motivation (willing) is one of the driving forces of learning, as it encourages activity and thought. On the other hand, motivation makes them spend more time working, and therefore they are likely to learn more.
Users are permanently active when interacting with the computer and maintain a high degree of involvement and initiative at work.
The versatility and interactivity of the computer and the possibility of "dialoguing" with it, attracts and maintains their attention.
Computer teaching materials are a complementary training resource that must be used in the right way and at the right times.
Beyond technological innovations, the future of the network in educational centers will be marked by the development of an ambitious vision of the future at the different decision-making levels of the educational system. This prospective vision should be developed along three lines of action: promoting teacher training and motivation actions, promoting investment in technological infrastructures and developing curricula in such a way that they integrate approaches and methodologies in accordance with new educational needs.
Multimedia Teaching Materials
1. Multimedia teaching materials are computer programs and interactive web pages, which include textual and audiovisual elements, and are specifically developed to facilitate certain learning. Multimedia teaching materials are any material that we use for educational purposes, also called an educational resource. Those specifically developed to facilitate the teaching and learning processes are the so-called didactic materials or teaching aids.
Elements of Multimedia Teaching Materials Contents
Structured databases that can contain texts, graphics, sounds and videos
- Audiovisual Environment
Perceptive environment with which the material is presented, such as titles, windows, menus, icons, background and colors.
- Navigation system
The navigation system includes: navigation map, online / offline use, possible itineraries.
- Activities
The activities with which students learn.
- Interactive
They can be informative, questions, problems, and exploratory.
- Other Features
Printing of reports, adjustment of parameters and documentation.
Multimedia programs have a high didactic potential, which due to their audiovisual and interactive nature is attractive and motivating for students. However, it should be borne in mind that multimedia teaching materials are complementary educational resources.
Potential Advantages and Disadvantages of Educational Multimedia
Advantages disadvantages
Interest. Motivation. Motivation is an engine of learning because it encourages activity and thinking, they also spend more time working, therefore, they are likely to learn more. Addiction. Too much motivation can lead to addiction. Distraction. Students sometimes engage in play rather than work. Interaction. Intellectual activity continues. Students are permanently active when interacting with the computer and maintain a high degree of involvement in the work. The versatility and interactivity of the computer and the possibility of “dialoguing” with it attracts and maintains your attention. Anxiety. Continuous interaction with the computer can cause anxiety in students.
Students often learn with less time. Relevant aspect in the case of business training, especially when personnel are removed from their productive work in a company to recycle. Incomplete and superficial learning. The free interaction of students with these materials, not always of quality, often provides incomplete learning with simplistic and shallow views of reality. Initiative development. Due to the constant participation it fosters the development of the initiative, to decide based on the responses of the computer. Very rigid dialogues. The teaching materials do not allow dialogues as open and rich as those of the student teacher.
Learning from mistakes. The immediate response and actions of the users allows students to know their errors right at the moment they occur and generally the program offers them the opportunity to try new responses or ways of acting to overcome them. Facilitate evaluation and control. Freed Professor of repetitive work. They free the teacher from repetitive, monotonous and routine work, so that more can be devoted to stimulating the development of the higher cognitive faculties of the students.
Deployment of minimum effort strategies. Students can find strategies to meet the minimum mental effort, ignoring the study possibilities offered by the program. Due to the versatility of the computer, a high degree of interdisciplinarity that allows various types of treatment to be carried out on very wide and varied information.
Lags compared to other activities. Provoked when they address partial aspects of a subject and differ in the form of presentation and depth of the contents with respect to the treatment given to other activities. Individualization. These materials individualize the work of the students, since the computer can adapt to their previous knowledge and to their work rhythm. Useful for complementary and recovery activities.
Isolation: This individual work, in excess, can lead to problems of sociability. Cooperative activities. The computer encourages group work and the cultivation of social attitudes, the exchange of ideas, cooperation and the development of personality. Dependence on others. Stable but flexible groups should be made and groups should not be large, as some students could become spectators of others' work. Contact with new technologies. They generate experiences and learning.
They help to facilitate the necessary computer and audiovisual literacy. Visual triedness and other physical problems. Too much time working at the computer or bad posture can cause various ailments.
They provide information. CDROMs or internet databases can provide all kinds of multimedia and hypertext information.
Partial vision of reality. The programs present a particular vision of reality, not reality such as instruments for information processing, including good dynamic graphics, simulations, heuristic learning environments… languages. Sometimes students do not know adequately the languages (audiovisual, hypertext…) in which computer activities are presented, which makes it difficult or impossible to use them.
They can lower training costs. Since by carrying out the training in the same workplaces, travel costs are eliminated.
Teacher training is an added cost In distance learning, the possibility for students to work at their computer with interactive self-learning materials provides great flexibility in study hours and a geographical decentralization of training.
Insufficient quality control. Materials for self-training and e-learning environments in general do not always have adequate quality controls.
Special Education is one of the fields where the use of the computer in general provides greater advantages.
Resolving the limitations of a student with special educational needs They constitute a good means of didactic research in the classroom, the fact of filing the students' responses allows a detailed follow-up of the mistakes made and the process that they have followed until the correct answer.
Computer problems. Sometimes students misconfigure or contaminate computers with viruses.
The Evaluation of Multimedia Teaching Materials
To use a multimedia program or material you have to consider its quality, and for that you have to evaluate it (observe, measure and judge).
Quality Criteria for Multimedia Materials Functional Aspects
- Didactic effectiveness Relevance, interest of the contents and services Ease of use Ease of installation of programs and complements Didactic versatility Two-way communication channels Multiple external links Multilingual nature Functionality of the documentation or user guide On-line support services (if available) Credits Absence of advertising
Technical aspects
- Quality of the audiovisual environment Quality and quantity of multimedia elements Quality and structure of content (databases) Structure and navigation of activities Hypertexts Interaction Reliable execution, adequate speed and visualization Originality and use of advanced technology
Pedagogical Aspects
- Specification of the objectives Ability to motivate, attractiveness Adaptation to the target audience Adaptation to users and their pace of work Resources for the search and processing of information Potentiality of teaching resources Complete nature Tutoring and evaluation Application and creative approach Promotion of initiative and self-learning Cooperative work Cognitive effort and capacity development
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