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Bonni Graham touched a nerve in me re: how/when do we know what medium/media
works for an audience. I believe we can analyze the effectiveness of a
technique after the fact, and even extrapolate past successes/failures into
new attempts at communicating, but the bottom line is
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
-- Kierkegaard
How's *that* for philosphical?
As a former teacher, I recall when "multimedia" was a big deal in the
classroom -- and it meant filmstrips synchronized to (gasp!) records
on plastic disc! Actually, looking at teaching & learning (the former
is just facilitation of the latter) is a good idea for technical
communicators/writers/specialists/practitioners. One of the principles
from teacher training that I like is to "hit 'em early, often, an d
from many directions". That applies to using more than one sense (or
medium) to try to get through the thick skulls of those little darlings.
So I think "multimedia technical communication" is about getting the
message across many ways. I think there is an art to using the best
media in a particular circumstance, and I think we technical communicators
are entitled to experiment, speculate, hypothesize, and try them all.
I know my children (mostly grown now), regard the printed word as
very limited -- compared with Nintendo, MTV, CD-ROM virtual reality, etc.
-- but they can still be surprised by a good story.
Talk about long-winded ... !
Regards,
Mike Beyries _____________________________
(beyries -at- csisdn -dot- com) | |
Technical Writer & Doer of Other Foul Deeds | Writing is easy: all you |
Located at Connective Strategies, Inc. | have to do is cross out |
465B Fairchild Dr. #207 | the wrong words. |
Mountain View, CA U.S.A. 94043 | |
Phone: 415-903-8382 ISDN | -- Mark Twain |
415-961-6691 FAX |_____________________________|
