From: chess@lightning.mcrcim.mcgill.edu ()
Subject: MULTIMEDIA-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL/TUTORING SYSTEM(VERY LONG)
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 92 00:04:00 GMT

I posted a article in July but did not receive as much 
feedback as I had anticipated . Here is a summary without 
the mail headers. This file is vey long (500 lines).

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Initial Post 
>Subject: Re: MULTIMEDIA-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL/TUTORING SYSTEM
>Newsgroups: comp.multimedia,comp.edu,comp.ai.edu

>I would like to know if any multimedia based instructional or
>tutoring systems have been developed .

>I am interested in working in this area and am looking at
>possible platforms, authoring systems, i/o devices and their
>specifications . I have access to sparc stations and ibm pcs
>(DOS and OS/2) .

(Press Return for Feedback)


Feedback :

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TP>Yepper, there are quite a few around.  I don't know too much about
TP>them but you can call a MM company for some info.  I'd recommend
TP>Multi F/X Corp.  (416)756-3315  Attn: Eugene Foo
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There are actually quite a few that will work in
DOS/OS2/WINDOWS.
The easiest way to find out is to get a copy of PC MAGAZINE (Good
source, although I personally question their ethics) dated March 31,
1992 VOL 11 NUMBER 6.  The whole issue is about multimedia.

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Try Authorware Professional it is a powerful authoring system that is easy to
learn, creates good quality material and allows good communication with other
windows apps.

Curently AW is available for mac's and MS Windows but I believe a Unix version
is pending.
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Yes, there have been.  The US army teaches languages through interactive video.
I suggest you join the IICS (International Interactive Communications Society)
Also, take a look at the magazine CBT Directions.  I worked very briefly on an
interactive video on addiction.

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I am working on a system primarily intended for literary pedagogy.  It 
falls under the heading tutoring or CAI, but just barely.  As always, 
I highly recommend NTERGAID's HyperWriter!.  They have a CAI module for 
it, but I haven't used it.  NTERGAID's phone number is (203) 380-1280.

As far as designing your application, the best advice I can give is to
have ALL of your source materials ready from the beginning, especially 
reference materials.  Also, unlike paper-based instructions and such,
defining the scope, magnitude, and audience COMPLETELY from the begining
is imperative.  I've found it easy to ajust manuals for a different
audience, but expanding a hypermedia docuverse can be a rather harrowing
experience.
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A good, broad and interesting question.
I write you because I've been involved in a multimedia project "Jean de
l'Ours" that aimed at teaching French to adults using multimedia. I could
write you some pages about this if you like. We used a Macintosh computer.
Most of the multimedia presentation was made using a program called
Supercard (a superset of the more known HyperCard for the Mac), with
animated sequences made with MacroMind Director. We imported many kinds of
material:
(a) photos, using a colour scanner.
(b) pencil drawings, using a grayscale scanner.
(c) digital photos, taken with a digital still video camera.
(d) video, digitised with a RasterOps video board.
(e) Sound, recorded an a cassette tape recorder and imported through the
Macrecorder.

The pictures were further processed, using Superpaint, Digital Darkroom,
and other software.
To give a more direct answer to your question, I believe many of the "good
old" educational authoring systems (Phoenix, Tencore, Plato, you name them)
are today extended with possibilities for including graphics, video, sound

Of course, to work with these media, you will need tools for importing and
processing the material. I believe tools like the ones we used in (a-e)
above exist for almost any platform today. Keep an eye on comp.multimedia,
comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard, rec.video.production and other groups to learn
more.

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 Sun will come out with one soon, as will other companies I'm not 
sure I'm allowed to mention yet.

Sun's authoring system (adn the one I work on):
GainMomentum, by Gain, Inc.

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since I have a little experience with Authorware here is something
about it.
It is available on the Mac, PC under Windows, and they say they are
porting it to Unix. That was the reason why we bought it.
You program it by dragging icon on the screen and build a kind of flow graph
with this icons. There are eleven different icon one for graphics, one for
video, one for animation, one for interaction, ...
Once on clicks on the icons one can edit the graphics. ...

If you want to see more about this. There is a working modell (demo version)
available. This demoversion is pretty much like the full version except you
cannot store a file that contains more than 50 icons. The documentation that
comes with the demo does not tell very much. But you can try out everything
and look at the examples, which comes with the demo.

My oppinion.
If one uses the things they provide it is relativly easy to create 
multi media courses. 
But as soon as you want to something unususal/more tricky you must program it.
Then you are lost, except you are not afraid to use all the dirty tricks of
programming.
Their language has very little controll of flow. So you have to work with 
stringmanipulation, conditional expressions and gotos.
But if you avoid this area it is fine.

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I'm including at the end of this message a copy of a posting I sent to
several network newsgroups in mid-July, announcing the latest release
of MAEstro.  It should give you all the information you need to know
to retrieve the software and documentation.  If anything in there is
not clear, however, please send me mail and I will be happy to help in
any way I can.

Included in the distribution is a PostScript version of a technical
paper presented at the Summer 1991 USENIX Conference.  Also in the
distribution is the MAEstro User's Guide, a seven chapter book that
shows you how to use the environment to create multimedia documents.
Beware: the PostScript files are large, so it's possible that you may
have trouble printing them.  If you find that you simply cannot print
them but would still like a copy of the documentation, we can arrange
something, I'm sure.  It would be easiest if you could send an
envelope with return postage, then I could send the User's Guide back.


-------------------------- cut here --------------------------

The Academic Software Development Group at Stanford University is
pleased to announce a new release of the MAEstro Multimedia Authoring
Environment.  The new release contains a number of improvements and a
couple of additions.  In addition, we are starting a mailing list for
those interested in discussing MAEstro with others on the network (see
below for more details).

MAEstro is a Unix-based, distributed multimedia authoring environment
designed to simplify the process of creating multimedia documents.

MAEstro is freely available to anyone via anonymous ftp from
sioux.stanford.edu (36.190.0.100), in the directory "pub/MAEstro".
The full source distribution, containing source code, documentation,
and other materials, is in the file "MAEstro.tar.Z".  There are other
files in the "pub/MAEstro" directory on sioux; for details, please
retrieve the file "pub/MAEstro/ReadMe".

New To This Release:

There are several changes and additions since the last software
release in January.  The most sigificant changes are:

* All XView-based applications have been re-designed with DevGUIDE
  3.0, and compiled with the XView 3.0 libraries.

* No more reliance on Sun's DevGUIDE software (although having it is
  still helpful).  Many people have not been able to compile the
  software because, while they might have the XView libraries, they
  might not have DevGUIDE.  We are including the DevGUIDE libraries
  (source code), following the copyright terms set forth in the Sun
  source code.  For more information, please see the Installation
  instructions in the full MAEstro distribution.

* A new application, VideoFrame, has been added.  This application was
  written in support of the XVideo board made by Parallax Graphics.
  The application is very simple, letting you control placement & size
  of on-screen video windows in your multimedia documents.

* A new driver for the VideoObject: the Sony CVD-1000 (also known as
  the "Vdeck").  The Vdeck driver is very new and is not fully tested,
  but we included it here in case any of you have one and would like
  to try it out (and maybe help us debug a little).  We will be
  putting out a new driver toward the end of summer, most likely.

* Various error fixes to the applications, better portability across
  Unix implementations.


MAEstro Mailing List:

A number of people have expressed interest in an electronic mailing
list through which they can share information about MAEstro.  In
response to this interest, we have decided to try administering a
mailing list for MAEstro.

The address of the mailing list is "maestro-mail@sioux.stanford.edu".
If you would like to join the mailing list, please send your request
to "maestro@sioux.stanford.edu" and we will add you to the list.

The mailing list is an experiment; if it becomes too cumbersome to
administer, we will try to find someone else to take over that task or
will find another way to foster discussion.  With your cooperation and
patience, though, we think the list will be successful.

One request: we are trying to keep track of who is using MAEstro and
for what purpose, no matter how trivial.  If you have the time and
interest, please take a minute or two to send a brief message to
"maestro@sioux.stanford.edu", letting us know why you decided to
retrieve the software.  We would greatly appreciate any information
you might be willing to provide.  Thank you in advance for your
consideration.

--------------------------
If you saw the original announcement of MAEstro in mid-October, the
rest of this message will be familiar to you.  If not, please read on
for more information about MAEstro.

The primary goal of MAEstro is to make as simple as possible the
process of creating multimedia documents.  Many current tools for
working with multimedia focus on "courseware" (software written for a
particular domain of instruction or research), where the focus lies in
the structured presentation of media.  Such tools are often oriented
toward programmers, making it difficult for a large number of
"students" to use such multimedia tools for their own learning.  By
focusing on the authorship process, we hope to turn "students" into
authors, giving them widespread, simple access to a wide variety of
media.  The term "students" is quoted since it is used as a generic
term; the concept of simplifying authorship should be applicable to
everyone.


More About MAEstro:

MAEstro is really an inter-application messaging system; this release
includes a suite of applications that use the messaging system to
create multimedia documents.  As opposed to many multimedia authoring
tools that try to control a wide variety of media from within a
single, monolithic application, MAEstro was designed to support
separate media with separate applications.  Each medium in the MAEstro
environment has an application dedicated to the control of that medium
(they are called "media editors" in the MAEstro environment).  For
example, one of the MAEstro applications is built to control the Sun
CD-ROM device; the application is responsible for control and editing
of audio CD's, but not text, graphics, video, or any other medium.
Similarly, the VideoEdit application is responsible for editing video,
but not for editing text or sampled audio.

Authorship in MAEstro is distributed; it is distributed in the sense
that an author chooses which media he will use for his multimedia
document, then use the appropriate applications to edit those media.
To combine the separate media into a coherent multimedia document, an
authoring application is launched.  The role of the authoring
application is to communicate with and coordinate the actions of the
separate media editors, using the inter-application protocol around
which MAEstro is designed.

The MAEstro messaging system is built on top of Sun RPC, being
designed to work in a setting that supports workstations from a number
of vendors.

The first release of MAEstro was developed on Sun workstations, but
the protocol has been compiled and tested on NeXT and DEC
workstations.  If you are interested in developing applications for
any workstation platform, we would be interested in hearing from you.


MAEstro Components:

This release of MAEstro consists of the following components:

Applications:

cdEdit --	Used for annotating audio CD's via the Sun
		CD-ROM drive. 

VideoEdit --	Used to annotate computer-controlled videodisc and
		videotape devices.  Currently we have drivers for the
		Pioneer4200, Pioneer6000, Sony{1450,1500,1550},
		Panasonic Optical Disc Recorder, NEC PC-VCR, and Sony
		CVD-1000 ("Vdeck").

vcrEdit --	An application similar in function to that of
		VideoEdit, but more suited to the speed of
		computer-controlled videotape players.  Currenty we
		support the NEC PC-VCR and Sony Vdeck player/recorders.

vcrDub --	An application used for editing of video materials.
		The most common use is to record edits from one
		videotape player to another, eliminating extraneous
		video material and thereby reducing search time to any
		edit meant to be included in a final multimedia document. 

QuoteMaker --	Used for quoting from online texts.  QuoteMaker is
		typically used for adding titles or short text quotes
		to a multimedia document.  It is not a full
		word processor.

DigitalTapeRecorder --
		An application built around the SPARC audio
		capabilities.  Used to record, play, edit, and
		annotate sound files so they can later be used in
		multimedia documents.

ShellEdit --	A "bridge" between applications that speak the MAEstro
		protocol and those that do not.  Used to include
		applications in a multimedia document that are not
		normally part of MAEstro.  For example, ShellEdit can
		be used to launch a PostScript previewer so that the
		PostScript document can be included in a multimedia
		document.

ImageEdit --	Allows the author to include still images in
		multimedia documents (for the next release we plan to
		replace this application with another called
		"DisplayTool".  DisplayTool will feature a simplified
		interface, support for additional image formats, and
		fewer errors.  If time permits, we will release
		DisplayTool by itself, sometime during the summer.)

VideoFrame --	Built in support of the XVideo video-in-a-window board
		from Parallax Graphics, this small application lets
		the author configure on-screen video windows on a
		per-edit basis.  The author can control size,
		location, video scaling/cropping, and color control.

TimeLine --	Our current "authoring application" (the application
		that coordinates the actions of the media editors
		above).  TimeLine presents the author with a timeline
		track for each currently open media editor, allowing
		the author to temporally arrange media from all the
		applications and play them in rough synchronization.

PortManager --	An application that facilitates inter-application
		communication.  It is always running, and should be
		transparent to the author.  The PortManager should
		always be running before the other applications are
		launched.


Tools:

MAEstro Messaging Library: An ANSI-C library used for
inter-application communication.  All MAEstro applications (with the
exception of the vcrDub application) use the MAEstro library for
inter-app communications.

VideoObject Library: A library of serial-line video drivers, used by
application programmers to gain device-independent support of a
variety of videodisc and tape players (and recorders).  We welcome new
drivers to the library in order to make the VideoObject library more
functional to application programmers who wish to use video.

XView File Browser Object: When we wrote this, XView did not have a
File Browser package.  It still doesn't, but the new DevGUIDE
libraries now have one.  However, we believe that the File Browser we
wrote has some important features worth saving, so the Browser
remains.  The Browser can be completely mouse-driven (you needn't type
anything), or you can use the file completion features of the Browser
(using both Tab and Escape keys, or by typing "~user").  In addition,
the Browser will do simple filetype checking (assuming that your
documents have a header line at the beginning that uniquely identifies
their type).


Documentation:

The User's Guide is a (roughly) 150 page document in seven chapters
that explains in detail how to use the various applications in the
MAEstro environment to create a multimedia document.

The MAEstro Programmer's Guide documents the MAEstro messaging system
and instructs programmers on how to write applications for the MAEstro
environment.

The VideoObject Programmer's Guide shows how you can write
applications that use video devices such as videodisc and videotape
players, without having to put a lot of device-specific code in your
applications.  It also shows how to add support for new video devices,
allowing existing applications to transparently take advantage of the
new drivers.

There is also a short ReadMe file that explains the use of the File
Browser object.


Getting MAEstro:

MAEstro is freely available via anonymous ftp from sioux.stanford.edu
(36.190.0.100), in the directory "pub/MAEstro".

MAEstro is available in two forms:

* Binary-only release -- The MAEstro applications have been
  pre-compiled for Sun SPARCstations running SunOS 4.1.X, for those
  who might be interested in using the MAEstro environment but are not
  interested in maintaining source code or adding new functionality to
  the environment.  This release occupies about 2 MB of disk space
  uncompressed.

* Full Release -- The full release contains source code and
  documentation for all the applications.  This release is useful for
  those who are interested in the MAEstro architecture and those who
  wish to write their own applications to "plug into" the MAEstro
  environment (more about that later).  This release occupies about
  8.5 MB of disk space uncompressed.


Future MAEstro Development:

Although the current release of MAEstro consists solely of XView-based
applications, the MAEstro protocol is toolkit-independent.  Due to
budgetary limitations currently in effect at Stanford U., we have not
been able to write additional applications for other platforms, but
hope that conditions will change in the near future.

MAEstro was developed with GCC, the GNU C Compiler.  Gcc gave us the
flexibility of writing ANSI-C code and at the same time using toolkit
libraries that had not yet been written to ANSI-C standards.  In order
to compile MAEstro, you must use gcc (or other ANSI-C compiler).

We are making MAEstro freely available in the hope that people at
other universities, vendors, and the like will find MAEstro of some
use.  In order to realize MAEstro's full potential here at Stanford,
we encourage others to use MAEstro and send us your suggestions,
criticisms, error reports, and any code you wish to contribute.

We hope that some developers will be encouraged to write applications
for the environment that we neither had the time, resources, nor
imagination to develop ourselves.

If you have any comments, suggestions, error reports (or fixes), or
source code that you would like to contribute, please send mail to

	maestro@sioux.stanford.edu

There is an error report form in the full distribution to help you
report errors more accurately.

For a more detailed technical discussion of the MAEstro architecture
and issues that went into its design, please refer to the paper
"MAEstro - A Distributed, Multimedia Authoring Environment" presented
at the 1991 Summer USENIX Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.  A
PostScript copy of the paper is also included in the Documentation
subdirectory of the MAEstro distribution.  The paper discusses some of
the other important features of MAEstro such as its ability to scale
to different media delivery sites, the ability to quickly add support
for new media when they become available, and the simplicity of the
protocol.

We hope that you will find MAEstro to be a useful and enjoyable
package.  We will continue to do our best to make it a worthwhile
software environment.


	George Drapeau
	MAEstro Project Leader
	Libraries and Information Resources
	Stanford University

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The University of Delaware's Instructional Technology Center holds a
series of five seminars on "Getting Started with Multimedia" throughout
the year.  One of these is "Supporting Multimedia Development and
Delivery"  which describes how we set up our 12 machine lab with full
audio and video digitizing and programming capabilities.  I'd be happy
to send you some brochures or talk to you about our seminars.

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In answer to your question on multimedia tutoring systems: yes there
are people developing classroom systems that take advntage of multiple
media.  A good overview is provided in _Cognition, Education, &
Multimedia_ , edited by Nix and Spiro, from Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.
Here at the Interactive Computer Environments Lab at the U of I at
Chicago we are developing a system that allows young users to author
stories in a direct manipulation environment, then presents the story
as written and spoken text, graphics, animations and sound effects.
We've done our development on Apple Macs using SuperCard.

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Thats all the feedback . I cannot publicly acknowledge the contibutions
of the individual writers as I have to protect their privacy .


Sandy

Newsgroups: comp.multimedia