 |
 |
 |
|
American Passages
American Passages is a three million dollar educational project on American Literature produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting for the Annenberg/CPB Foundation (http://www.learner.org). The multi-media project includes an award-winning 16-part video documentary series, a newly revised Norton Anthology of American Literature, an 800 page Instructor Guide, a 400 page Study Guide, and an extensive and dynamic Web site.
The American Passages site is breaking new ground in online learning. The site includes a rich cultural archival resource library with over 3,000 historical artifacts including audio files of critical speeches and author readings, newspaper articles, photography, artwork and other items. AMAZING! has created an easy-to-use search interface for the archive, allowing users to quickly and efficiently locate multiple items that meet their criteria.
In addition to viewing the items, users can also access an Online Slideshow tool that allows teachers or students to build classroom presentations and homework assignments including; audio, text and visual files, and originally composed text narrative. Users can write, save, and edit online, email their Slideshows to others, or download their Slideshows to their own computers.
When actually building Slideshows the site functions very much like a simpler version of PowerPoint. The biggest challenge was developing an interface easy enough for the least technically experienced user and simple enough for the oldest browser software - a requirement when providing sites for educational use.
This site makes extensive use of PHP and MySQL. Upon request we would be happy to give a tour of the web-based administration tools used on the American Passages site.
We're proud to announce that American Passages took the Gold in the 2003 Chicago Film Festival for Best Educational Documentary.
AMAZING! provided the following for this project:
- Planning, project management and consultation
- Interface design for the Web site
- HTML, PHP, MySQL and PERL engineering
- a computer animated show open for video
- keys and credits for video
- page layout for the 16 teacher's guides
To visit American Passages, click here.
To build an American Passages slideshow, click here.
To watch the video episodes from American Passages, click here.
Back to AMAZING MISSIONS.
|
|
|
|
|
|
