Even though Spring Quarter classes are winding down, the artists at Mediaworks are as busy as ever. Here's a look at some of the projects they'll be working on through the summer.
Photography and Videography
- Continuing a long UC Davis tradition, Mediaworks' photographers will individually photograph, on location, both this year's new students and graduates from the professional schools, including Veterinary Medicine, the Medical School, the Graduate School of Management, and the Law School. Once everyone has been photographed, Mediaworks' digital photographers and designers will combine the photographs into class composites. The photographers will also be shooting graduation ceremonies for the Medical School, Chicano Studies, and African American Studies.
- The photography group is involved in several different photo shoots. They will be shooting the design department's end-of-year student show. This group has also photographed the plants at the Arboretum in their finest spring bloom, as part of a project that may turn into a year-round "changing face of the Arboretum" project. Mediaworks' photographers are also updating images for the viticulture and enology department.
- Over the summer, photographers and videographers will also capture Design Gallery exhibitions for the design department. These videos will be used in design classes and provide essential documentation of clothing exhibitions that are displayed only once every ten years to minimize wear and tear on the garments.
- Several instructional videos are in the works for the UC Davis Medical Center. One will detail medical and social services for cancer patients and their families. Another, for pediatrics, will deal with the use and care of implants. Other video projects will also be underway for the departments of agriculture and environmental science and theatre and dance.
Classroom Multimedia
- Summer is prime time for instructors to work on fall classroom presentations. Mediaworks is developing one such project for Entomology Professor Harry Kaya. This project for Entomology 113B, will be an exercise in clarifying the "inner workings" of various insects through a series of illustrations and animations. The challenge for the Mediaworks artists and designers will be to translate this complex subject into clear, concise components. Even existing textbooks do not provide clarity for the students -- and often create more confusion. Combining hand illustrations with PowerPoint and Photoshop techniques, the final product will be a PowerPoint presentation that gives Kaya the autonomy to set the pace and focus of each lecture.
- Building on the success of the spring Meet the Experts series at the Arbor, Mediaworks will be refining and adding topics for the fall 2001 sessions. Over the last several months, topics for this popular series have included photography, illustration, color management, and advanced PowerPoint. This series has been well received by faculty interested in learning more about how to integrate technology in the classroom and has been a good way for Mediaworks to highlight its capabilities.
- Several artists are working on instructional technology presentations for this year's Summer Institute on Technology in Teaching.
- Working with the Horticulture department, Mediaworks will be developing its first DVD project over the summer. They will use this pilot to learn how to use the system and evaluate its potential for future instructional use. Other projects currently awaiting funding approval may also be used to help Mediaworks evaluate the system. If everything works out as planned with the pilots, full implementation of this system could be just around the corner. One of the many advantages to this technology is that it will allow faculty to combine hundreds of video tapes and slides onto a single DVD for course use.
- Classroom crowding is an important issue on campus. Over the summer, Mediaworks will begin developing projects that will result in several large general education courses being put online.
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