Web-Based Multimedia Children's Art Cultivation

Introduction

With the rapid advance in Web and multimedia technologies, authoring various types of multimedia content and distributing them on the Web has been very popular for many years. These technologies are applied in e-learning extensively, such as from language learning (e.g., ESL) to professional domain knowledge (e.g., computer science). In contrast, e-learning systems focusing on art domains, especially for kids or teenagers, are few. This is a notable shortcoming, because from a technical viewpoint, current advances in multimedia technology via the Web promise this kind of application. On the other hand, compared with technologies needed for more general-purpose knowledge, cultivating children’s art through e-learning technology needs much more edutainment ingredients – it must be interesting and interactive and offer multimedia. Realizing this kind of e-learning is really a challenge, not only from a pedagogical viewpoint (the first ingredient) but also technical ones (the latter two ingredients).

In this article, we describe how our framework design for online authoring and presentation works. The goal of this framework is to provide a universal platform that enables students to learn more actively through sharing their own pieces easily with other learners. Peers and teachers can comment on students’ work for further discussion or instruction.

To this end, a multimedia authoring and presentation tool named “My E-card” (http://media.csie.ncnu.edu.tw/haotung/myecard/) has been designed to allow students to combine different-media objects (such as a painting object, typing object and music object) into a time-ordered, synchronized multimedia document (i.e., animated sound painting). Students can import any existing media objects (e.g., image files or MIDI files) in cyberspace through a Universal Resource Locator (URL), or create new ones from different supporting tools, such as static painting, writing an essay or composing music. We use the XML format to describe the multimedia objects and their temporal, spatial relationship metadata because of XML’s high extensibility and flexibility (W3C, 2004; Villard, Roisin, & Layada, 2000). Students can resume their work at other places. They don’t have to worry about data integrity or the presentation consistency of the unfinished work deposited in the server. At any stage, current piecework can be played out with synchronization to preview the result.

Research has indicated that both competence and confidence are keys to the success of active learning (Koutra, Kastis, Neofotistos, Starlab, & Panayi, 2000; Jeremy, Roy, Christopher, Douglas, & Barbara, 2000). Experimental results show that our present work enforces the highly interactive creation process, which involves acts of media creating and further authoring – an approach that leads to personal competence. Moreover, playing composite multimedia work with a synchronized manner and sharing the great work with friends reinforce personal confidence.