Here’s the presentation:

This one, however, changed daily for 9 days. Here’s the sequence:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday (The flames flickered ever so slightly):

Friday – Monday:

Now, once I finished that final graphic Dan approached me and made a funny request. He wanted a special little violent ending for himself. The thought of a custom final header for a few sketchy people sounded fun…so I obliged with this header that showed for a mere 5 people on campus:

In addition to the internal alteration of the header, I did another alteration on the login page for the Tuesday and Wednesday before as well as the Thursday of Thanksgiving. My pal, the turkey, showed up in place of the random image. Here he is:

Overall, the header was well received be the campus feuling my desire to come up with something nifty for the coming holidays! A special thanks to Ken, Zach, and Dan for giving good content suggestions and allowing me to bounce ideas off them!

The Scenario:
You are a scientist that studies chimpanzees. Last month you witnessed one or more chimpanzees do something that has never been done before. You were tasked with creating an application that details various aspects of that discovery…for some reason you chose Powerpoint as your tool.

Minimum Requirements:

• Your application must make use of various forms of media. (text, images, etc) – 20pts
• Your application must include at least 12 slides PLUS an additional notes slide that lists/describes the types of navigation used. – 20pts
• Your application must utilize (at minimum) conceptual/modal navigation and hypertext. Other forms of navigation can be used as appropriate. – 25pts
• Your application must not navigate as normal powerpoint slides navigate (i.e. advance on click). To get a starting point, read the instructions below. – 25pts
• Use proper spelling and grammar. – 10pts
• Be creative and have fun with the assignment! – Priceless

Setting Up Your Powerpoint Application For This Assignment:

• With your powerpoint application open, click on Slide Show > Set Up Show….
• In the Show options section, check the box: Loop continuously until ‘Esc’
• In the Show slides section, check the From radio button and choose the start/end slides as appropriate to your application. (If your first slide is your contents where you begin all your navigation, then you’ll want the start/end boxes to be set to 1 and 1). Experiment.
• …this is just a starting point. Explore the application and make it bend to your will.

Here’s a good reference for advanced PowerPoint stuff.

Handing in your Lab:
The lab is due next Friday at midnight. To hand it in:

• log in to myPlymouth
• click on the myCourses tab
• click on the Multimedia course
• go into the Assignments section
• click on Lab 1
• Browse to your powerpoint file in the form
• Submit it

Reminder: We have lab on Thursday, so we meet in Memorial. I will be posting the lab assignment on this blog before lab.

As technology has progressed we have seen a convergence of both the presentation and study of Multimedia. Multimedia Lecture #1 will discuss this convergence and further continue the introduction with the discussion Multimedia Navigation and Usability.

Get the Class Slides here.

Check out this great resources:

• IBM Research…details various multimedia uses and applications.
• Definition of Multimedia

Read this paper in preparation for our next class: Reducing Cognitive Load in Multimedia Navigation.

Class: Multimedia (CS 3440)

Instructor: Matthew Batchelder
Office: Hyde 3rd Floor, ITS Offices
Phone: 535-2086
Office Hours: I am in my office most of the time between 8AM and 5PM. However, I will make sure I’m there if you call or email me ahead of time.
Email: mtbatchelder (AT) plymouth (DOT) edu
Required Text Book: Fundamentals of Multimedia, Ze-Nian Li, Mark S. Drew (publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall, ISBN: 0-13-061872-1)

Meeting Times and Places:
Tuesday: Rounds 207, 12:30-1:45.
Thursday: Memorial 213, 12:30-1:45 Lab.

Course Description:
Use and development of multimedia – combining text, graphics, sound, still and video images and animation into a unified, seamless document. Examines the nature of the various media, the capture or creation, digitalization and modification of each media type, the architecture and technology of multimedia systems, the principles behind effective multimedia presentations, analysis and design of GUI systems and multimedia development through the use of common software packages. Treats both the fundamental concepts and current and emerging technologies.

Course Goals and Objectives:

1. Learn about the nature of text, image, audio, video, graphic and animation files.
2. Learn about capturing the various media.
3. Learn about creating, editing and storing the various media.
4. Learn about digitization and compression and the role they play in multimedia.
5. Learn about authoring tools for packaging multimedia systems.
6. Learn about web-based multimedia and the special problems involved in delivering media over the WWW.
7. Learn about effective graphical user interfaces.
8. Learn to use a variety of common software packages to complete the above objectives.

Evaluation:
40% – Labs
30% – Quizzes
30% – Final Project

Grade Scale:
Grades will be assigned according to the following scale:
93-100 – A
90-92 – A-
88-89 – B+
83-87 – B
80-82 – B-
78-79 – C+
73-77 – C
70-72 – C-
68-69 – D+
63-67 – D
60-62 – D-
below 60 – F

Evaluation Items

• Final Project: Every student will be expected to complete a semester project. The project will be presented to the rest of the class during the last week of classes and during the final exam period (which is Tuesday, May 16, 11am – 1:30pm). The project will comprise 30% of the semester grade.
• Quizzes: There will be 4 hour-long quizzes. Of the four quizzes, only 3 will count toward the semester grade, with the lowest score of the four being dropped. These three quizzes and a final exam will comprise 30% of the semester grade (6% each). NO makeup quizzes will be given for any reason. If for some reason a student misses an quiz, that quiz will be his or her dropped quiz. The first section (11-11:50) of the final exam period will be used for project presentations. The quiz schedule is as follows:
  1. Quiz 1: Tuesday, February 21
  2. Quiz 2: Tuesday, March 28
  3. Quiz 3: Tuesday, April 18
  4. Quiz 4: Thursday, April 27
  5. Final Exam: Tuesday, May 16, 11am-1:30am (11-11:50 will be used for project presentations)
• Labs: There will be a number of lab sesions throughout the semester. During the lab, we will meet in Memorial 213. During some of these lab periods, students will be expected to complete an exercise. These lab assignments will comprise 40% of the semester grade, with the lowest lab assignment grade being dropped. NO late labs will be accepted. If for some reason a student misses a lab, that lab will be his or her dropped lab.

Attendance Policy:
Attendance will not be taken in class or lab. However, every student is responsible for everything covered, even if it is not in the text.

Academic Honesty:
Issues of copyright and attributing original sources are particularly important in this course. These topics will be covered in this course, but it is important to realize from the first day of this course that you must accurately represent work that you have created originally versus work that consists of elements from other authors/creators. A safe guideline is to very clearly attribute the work of others, and use content from other people sparingly in your own work. I reserve the right to individually question students about their homework assignments and labs to have the student explain his or her answers to me. If you are unable to explain your answers when I ask, you will not be given credit for the assignment or lab. Such a situation constitutes plagiarism and you are referred to the Student Handbook for a description of the possible consequences of such academic dishonesty.

Tentative Schedule:

Since July, I’ve been developing my Ajax applications and examples using SAJAX (Simple Ajax), a PHP/Javascript framework for Ajax development. It was great at first glance…a lot easier than building Asynchronous Javascript transactions from scratch. But despite its ease, it was a bit clunky. Last week I was stumbling around the web looking for anything new to suck up and found a beauty of a tool. Script.aculo.us.

Script.aculo.us is a Javascript Effects and Control framework developed by Thomas Fuchs, a software architect living in Vienna, Austria who, like me, was disappointed by current web application frameworks that made no sense to him. His framework is 3 things: Easy to Use, Simple, and Easy to Use. His libraries – built off of the Ajax framework, Prototype – blow SAJAX out of the water! Let me give you an example to, say, update a news title on an article (I won’t include the HTML markup as that is trivial):

Here’s what needs to be done to build a SAJAX call:

Step 1: Create a SAJAX Call Function

function x_updateTitle()
{
	sajax_do_call('/process_ajax.php',"x_updateTitle", x_updateTitle.arguments);
}

Step 2: Create a server side function to handle the update

< ?php
function x_updateTitle($news_id,$news_title)
{
	//do some database calls to update the title;
}
?>

Step 3: Edit the server side SAJAX file (process_ajax.php) and add x_updateTitle to the list of valid call functions

< ?php
include('sajax.php');
addFunctions('x_updateTitle');
handleClientRequest();
?>

Step 4: Call the SAJAX Javascript function from somewhere (in an onClick, onSubmit or something)

<a onClick="x_updateTitle(1, document.getElementById('news_title').value, 'callbackFunction');">asdfdf</a>

Here’s the equivalent in Script.aculo.us
Step 1: Create a server side function to handle the update

< ?php
function x_updateTitle($news_id,$news_title)
{
	//do some database calls to update the title;
}
?>

Step 2: Call the Script.aculo.us Javascript function from somewhere (in an onClick, onSubmit or something)

<a onClick="new Ajax.Request('/process_ajax.php', { asynchronous:true, parameters:'news_id=1&news_title=$(\'news_title\')', onSuccess:callbackFunction });">asdf</a>

Thats it! Its a big difference. Thats just the tip of the iceberg. Script.aculo.us has many features for implementing Drag and Drop with one line of Javascript code; fancy display/hide functions; dynamic DOM Element creation/deletion; field autocompletion; and various other visual effects. It slick. And to top it off, the Script.aculo.us website is pretty sweet! Luckily the documentation is excellent and is in wiki format. As Plymouth State moves into the Web 2.0 world, I’ll be pushing for Script.aculo.us/Prototype to be our Ajax standard. I have seen the light and it is good.

Today we meet in Memorial 213 and we’ll be:

• Going over the above documentation
• Setting up our Blogs
• Posting a Blog Entry
• Commenting on someone else’s Blog
• Giving the instructor $2,000 just for fun.

The use of Blogs in our class:
I have discussed this a couple of times but have not yet been clear on exactly how we will be using your blogs this semester. Starting 9/12/2005 you will be required to make a minimum of 2 non-assignment related posts a week. You can post as many posts as you want every week but here’s the deal:

• If you post diary-like posts, it must convey an issue you have encountered and dealt with; and/or it must contain your opinions on topics you have encountered.
• In addition to your own blog posts, you will also be required to post your answers to assignments throughout the semester. These do not apply towards your 2 posts per week.
• I will be grading your posts. Here are the grading specifics for your semester of blogging (I will grade your blogging over the semester, not each one individually):
  

  Points	Subject
  20	Regular postings (at least two/week)
  10	Postings address clear topic and fit in the theme of the blog or (for journal blogs) are particularly insightful.
  10	Postings are well-written and organized
  10	Postings contain adequate links to supporting/clarifying websites.
  10	Initiative and Originality
  10	Blog entries are of potential interest to outside reader.
  10	Response to comments: Author has responded to comments adequately.
  10	Effective use of images and text formatting to create a visually appealing blog.
  10	EXTRA CREDIT: Blog has off-campus commenter. (non-friend or family member )
  Forfeit all points if in violation.	Netiquette: postings do not violate any rules of good Internet conduct. See notes addressing netiquette. (Violations must be immediately cleared up to prevent blog account from being switched off)
  100	TOTAL (110 with extra credit)

Blog Topics:
Blogging may not come easy to everyone. It took a while for me to get the swing of things, but once I started going I keep finding odd things to post :) If you run into a mindblock and can’t think of anything, maybe this will start your mind thinking in the right direction:

Maybe try a PSU centered blog

• PSU events: music, films, plays, speakers, plays
• PSU sports: how did the(fill-in specific sport) team do?
  How can team x improve? Etc.
• PSU politics: what issues are ranging on campus.
• PSU life: what is like to be a PSU student?

Aim for a special interest blog

• Gaming
• Poetry
• Art work
• Crafts
• Cooking
• Photography
• Literature
• Horticulture
• Outdoor pursuits (hiking, skiing, biking, etc)
• Bird watching
• Editorial blogs: reacting to issues in the media.
• Place blog: What is life like in … Plymouth, NH, your home town?
• Informational blog: how to do something (configure a firewall, build a canoe, fix a car, etc, travel for $25/day, etc)

(grading scale provided by Dr. Evelyn Stiller, Plymouth State University)

For each class I will provide an outline of the topics I plan to cover. Hopefully we’ll touch on each of these as well as any side topics that might arise.

• What Course is this? :)
• Discuss the Syllabus.
• What are Blogs?
• How will we integrate them into our course?
• Your first assignment is to read this essay on the creative process. Yeah, its kind of a long read and the way it is written is a little odd (there are things repeated multiple times in the same paragraph…which is kind of annoying). Despite all of that it has some good points.

  After reading, answer these questions and bring them to class on Friday. We will discuss this article there and I will be asking a few people to tell me their answers. ;)

  Here are the questions:

  • When are you the most creative?
  • What are the necessary conditions for creativity?