Media Museum: A Finnish CD-ROM Project

Symposium:


Session Title:
  • Multimedia (The Next Generation)

Presentation Title:
  • Media Museum: A Finnish CD-ROM Project

Presenter(s):


Abstract:

  • Abstract

    The objective of Media Museum has been to develop the first extensive Finnish hypermedia information source in CD-ROM format for the school-aged. It illustrates different media and their history, creation, usage, influence and future directions with hypermedia files containing linked hypertext files, sound, video clips and still pictures. In addition, the reader can use interactive simulations for instance to compose his own video.

    ABC hyperbook?

    Media Museum is a hypermedia ABC book of a sort. It is the first Finnish complete presentation of media and especially directed at a wide audience. Its goal is to familiarize the audience with new media technology as an extension of old media technology and to bring up aspects in the old media that often go unnoticed. Media Museum aims to educate its readers in critical media literacy — to recognize and avoid manipulation, to teach navigating in the jungle of media ecology and to extract useful contents for our lives from media products. Media Museum has been published as a CD-ROM to be used at home and at school.

    The Content

    The interface of Media Museum is a computerized television display that allows the reader to enter nine different scenarios. Each of the scenarios – media spaces – occupies 40 – 60  megabytes on the CD-ROM. The user interface is implemented as a room metaphor: each scenario or its element is pictured as a room. The user interface and all media scenarios are accompanied by hypertext help windows and a general media vocabulary. An animation character, codenamed Agricola (the ‘father’ of written Finnish Ianguage from 1540), will aid the user in getting used to the material and make it even more interesting.

    The planned scenarios and media–spaces are:

    – The future Living Room
    – The Hypermedia space – The Computer hall – TV and Video corner
    – The Cinema – The Radio – The Press Room
    – The Printing House – The Birthplace of writing

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