January 2001

Online Newsletter for Greater Essex County
Computer Using Professionals

The return to balmy Essex County was quite a surprise.  Lots of snow here too!  As I'm out trying to get the driveway knocked down by myself, I realized that shovelling snow had become a spectator sport.  Sigh.  Fortunately, I enjoy doing this sort of thing, in moderation of course, and kept plugging away.  While it may be weeks before the blacktop shows through, I felt pretty good when the job was done.  

What's this got to do with computers?

I had a conversation with a colleague from another board and the topic turned to clipart.  Without going into too much detail, the bottom line was that if OSAPAC would just license a great deal of raw clipart, students could become much more creative.

Now this one truly bothered me.  Often, I've always viewed clipart or any type of media use as a spectator sport.  Too many times,  it is used as pure filler.  Next to increasing the font size in a word processing document, it's a popular way to ensure that if you have to create a two page document, that you fill both pages!  And, the really good clipart is vector based so that you can resize it and still maintain the proportions of the original image without skewing it.

The very best media, however, comes from sitting down with an authoring program like CorelDRAW! or Kidpix and creating EXACTLY the content that is needed.  "Close" is never a consideration and there's no compromise on the media to make it fit.

If you think of the really good Hyperstudio stacks, Internet sites, or any of the best computer resources they are examples of original work.  Someone has gone to a great deal of effort to ensure that the content is original, worthwhile, and of value to the end user in some sort of manner.  I think back to one of my secondary school English teachers who insisted that he didn't want us to regurgitate someone else's work when writing an essay.  He's right.  The value of doing something comes from originality; not from the thoughts of someone else.

Where does that put clipart and canned media then?  It's not the intent that they are dismissed as a waste of time.  In fact, properly used, they can be used to provide insight and the added depth and enrichment that all forms of multimedia are supposed to generate.  Maybe the ideal clipart or media should be placed in the document first to ensure that it's not an afterthought.  You know the logic "ok, webpage is done, now I need a piece of clipart to fill up this area..."

January will be the kickoff to what we hope to be an exciting time for students with the Greater Essex County Hyperstudio Festival.  It will be an exciting opportunity for students to create their own message and their own media.  In so doing, they will be able tell their own story.

I can't wait to see the results!

p.s. a special welcome to those who read this via www.iteachnet.org.  This page now appears there monthly.