Pearson Education and Chinook Multimedia have worked together on several long-term projects, including the Many Voices CD-ROMs, for Grade 1-5 students in Alberta.

VIRTUAL SOLUTIONS | TANGIBLE RESULTS

Testimonial: Pearson Education Canada

Pearson Education Canada hired Chinook Multimedia to create digital resources at Grades 1-5 as one component of our Many Voices program... to match the new Alberta Social Studies Program of Studies… Chinook demonstrated tremendous creativity in the choices of... activities at each grade level.. The Many Voices program is in use in over 75% of Alberta schools. One of our clear differentiators [compared to our competition] was the quality, approach, and content of the digital resources.

Susan Cox
Publisher, K-12 Social Studies
Pearson Education Canada

MEETING CLIENT EXPECTATIONS

Pearson Education Canada hired Chinook Multimedia to create the grade 1-5 Many Voices Interactive Multimedia Internet Research CD-ROMs for use in Alberta social studies classes. The CD-ROMs demonstrate our ability to design interactive, activity-based publications that deliver a program of client objectives and Alberta Education outcomes on a grade-by-grade basis to target audiences. We also created a teacher resource that provides a correlation of all outcomes to CD content and activities.

The CDs consist of a simulated web browser with simplified functionality suitable for children as young as 5 years of age. The CDs also featured our multimedia authoring software, cooleCreate (called the Presentation Tool).

The greatest challenge in this project was to be certain that young users would be able to use the resource and be actively engaged in the learning activities. Considerable research went into the learning design and the creation of an intuitive interface. The GUI is fairly consistent in functionality across grade levels. The "websites" are geared to grade level. Each has its own design and includes a variety of media to broaden user appeal. Each "website" also contains one or more activities that can be completed using the Presentation Tool. The Presentation Tool includes functionality that appeals to younger users (pencil tool, stamp, shape) and older users (tools to raise or lower the level of an object, change its opacity, rotate it). Users can click the media button to include a wide variety of media in their creations. Young users can create and publish their own multimedia products using the Presentation Tool, just as if they were on a sophisticated social networking website.

Melina Akins provided helped to envision and write many of the activities and resources. We also worked directly with subject matter experts for most topics. Chinook Multimedia provided research, design, programming, writing, editing, and copyediting services. Pearson Education oversaw the production and provided tremendous guidance and feedback throughout the development life cycle of each CD-ROM. Alberta Education reviewed and provided feedback on all content. The Many Voices CD-ROMs are used in Alberta Elementary Schools.

SERVICES

e-Learning, strategic planning, graphic design, authoring and editing

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