Apr
01

E-learning and the Way of the Pachyderm

Filed Under (New Media, Video, e-learning, instructional design, pachyderm) by Chris LaBelle on 01-04-2009

If visual media is king within the world of online instructional technology, then one of its most loyal subjects would be Pachyderm. Pachyderm was developed back in 2003 by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New Media Consortium and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Since then, Pachyderm has grown up into a full-fledged collection of different templates and features that allow you to incorporate video, text, audio and graphics into a multimedia presentation. Since Pachyderm’s formative years were spent in the world of art museums, its true strength is conveying visual meaning, oftentimes at the expense of how text is rendered. This is partly evidenced by the small font, text fields and reductionist-like menu structures available in the template-based navigational schemes. But, don’t hop off the elephant quite yet.

Pachyderm Logo

Pachyderm Logo

Did I mention that you don’t need to be a multimedia developer to create a relatively sophisticated Pachyderm multimedia presentation? And don’t fret quite yet about the aforementioned limitations; a new version of the software with significant enhancements is making its way around the corner soon.

Truth be told, when I produced my first Pachyderm presentation I realized that a Flash-produced equivalent of my one-day-long Pachyderm project would most likely have taken much, much longer; and keep in mind that I develop multimedia for a living. Of course, if I had used an authoring tool like Flash, I would have had much more flexibility to introduce different types of objects in a more customized presentation. However, most of the assets, i.e. images, videos, that I placed in Pachyderm felt appropriate for the environment since the Pachyderm end product is tightly organized around a uniform look and feel and the constraints that exist in the tool seemed reasonable. In a world where most educators simply don’t have the money to hire a multimedia developer, Pachyderm fits a definite need for educational communicators and students.

Here at Oregon State University, we initially rolled out Pachyderm in the Department of Agricultural Sciences. Our plan is to provide Pachyderm training to a group of early adopters who are equipped with Flip cams and very basic video editing skills. A key part of our training is to help encourage Pachyderm users to focus on specific topical themes; just as the California State University System has already done with great success. I would suggest looking through the Merlot Elixr Pachyderm examples. My favorite examples from this list are from a sign language class at CSU and a brilliant Social Documentation Overview project at Cal State Dominguez Hills.  Note that in both examples, the use of visual media is really the glue by which the narrative coheres around a solid core.

Our department is already heavily involved in advancing a more “democratized” movement of amateur video producers (see Jeff’s Flip cam post), and with Pachyderm we can now provide a powerful tool for faculty across campus to blend their video with other graphical and textual content to create a cohesive digital narrative that can convey meaning in a compelling manner.

Even though Pachyderm utilizes open-source code, which many people equate with “freeware”, it’s more probable that your early efforts to introduce Pachyderm to your community will not be entirely without cost or significant effort, requiring some assistance or monthly hosting from the New Media Consortium. In short, it’s not a trivial task to set up the Pachyderm software on a development server; especially if you seek to scale this as your user base grows.

As we move into the next phase of bringing Pachyderm to our campus, one of the most important issues will be to ensure that our early adopters understand that Pachyderm is best suited for digital narratives or short treatments of a narrow topic or theme. We hope to leverage existing examples from CSU and other universities to help demonstrate how Pachyderm has been used effectively in other academic environments.

If you’re just getting started with Pachyderm, you may want to check out Jeff’s presentation about Pachyderm.

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5 Comments Already, Leave Yours Too

Wendy on 7 April, 2009 at 10:08 am #
    

A colleague has asked me to help put a slide show on the web for him. He has about 50 digital photos from a recent event that he would like to post. What software should I try? Should I string them together in Windows MovieMaker? Is this a place to try Pachyderm?


labellec on 7 April, 2009 at 11:53 am #
    

Hi Wendy. This is a great question; but to find the best tool, I would really need more information from you. However, I’ll see if I can give you some options to help with the qualification process. First, the selection of the right tool depends on how much time you have to spend on the project, your existing comfort level with the tool (if you’re doing the work yourself) and how much flexibility you’d like to have with extending the project by including audio, video or other assets. If you’re truly wanting to limit your web-based presentation to images and you already have Windows MovieMaker (and are comfortable with this tool), then, this would be one option. If you’re looking for the most time and cost efficient option, you should definitely take a look at the online presentation tool called SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net). This tool allows you to upload PowerPoint slide sets (with images embedded) or Word documents directly to SlideShare’s hosting server, which then provides you a URL so you can point others to your presentation. You can also determine who has access to the presentation and the issue of hosting the content is taken care of via their remote server.

Another option for this kind of content is Adobe Presenter, which allows you to port PowerPoint presentations to an online format. This tool is not free and is best for presentations that include audio and need a more robust navigational scheme to help support an E-learning experience. If you’re willing to jump outside of your existing toolbox and have some extra time, my current favorite tool for this kind of project (assuming no audio) would be SlideShow Pro for either Flash or Lightroom. SlideShow Pro for Flash does not cost very much, but assumes you have Flash. SlideShow Pro is also inexpensive, but, requires Adobe Lightroom. I am also a very big fan of Adobe Lightroom for photo editing, but, again, these tools are a bit on the pricey side. Keep in mind that SlideShow Pro does not handle audio synchronization in its current version. Additionally, you would have to spend the time learning how to use a new tool if you go with an Adobe product and you would then have to post the content somewhere.

For web-based presentations that include audio, using a video editing tool like Windows MovieMaker, Final Cut Pro, Premier and so on gives you the most flexibility to add audio and other assets beyond just your images; however, the disadvantages compared to SlideShare are similar to SlideShow pro versus SlideShare: hosting and more time required to create your end product.

Having said all this, Pachyderm would probably not be the best tool for this kind of project unless your images are part of a larger narrative and you would like to develop this larger story using video clips, ancillary documents, and interactivity in a more open-ended online environment where the navigational scheme allows your user to navigate from object/asset A to object C using several different routes. One of the best ways to get a feel for how Pachyderm can be used in academic contexts is to look over some of the examples available via CSU (see the blog post for these links).

Let me know if you end up using another tool not included in this list. There are all kinds of other options not mentioned here, but, these are the main tools that come to mind.


estetik on 8 April, 2009 at 5:49 am #
    

Very interesting post for me to read. Congrats.


    

[...] and constantly update your tool set is as important.  For digital narratives or short stories, it’s hard to beat Pachyderm, especially with the new version around the corner.  Beyond the world of the learning management [...]


    

[...] interactive flash presentations without having to be an Adobe Flash programmer. (See Chris’s Pachyderm post.) Most online learning remains linear with learner choices limited to [...]


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