the Olive Tree
Winter 2005-06 Volume 13 Number 2

  Windows on Maine
In this issue: Windows on Maine is a pilot project to develop an online service offering streaming video programs and clips, and other primary and secondary digital resources, via broadband and wireless connections. It features a searchable database of complete programs and video clips from Maine Public Broadcasting Network's award winning historical series, HOME, the Story of Maine and its signature science series, Quest, Investigating Our World. Rich multimedia that further documents Maine's history and the Gulf of Maine ecology has been selected from collections of the state's cultural institutions, and complements the video archive.
The Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN) and the Maine State Museum, in collaboration with founding members of the Digital Maine Learning Group, have created a growing number of digital resources in support of school-based and life-long learning. Through Windows on Maine, crucial access is provided to enriched content that is essential to meeting the 21st century skills embedded in learning standards. Digital content is also a key component of current middle and high school professional development and training programs.

Windows on Maine explores the promise of Video on Demand (VOD), streaming media and its potential to be a force in evolving a new educational paradigm. Asynchronous streaming media used in the database includes video, audio, animation, interactive resources including Flash, searchable text, photographs, datasets, hot spots, web links, and transcripts. It offers the educational advantage of 24x7, or the "anytime-anywhere" notion that allows teachers and learners to tune in when and where they want. Entire programs from MPBN's Home and Quest series are available for on-demand viewing. Carefully selected clips from programs in each series illustrate key curricular concepts, and may be streamed on-demand, or downloaded to individual computers and integrated into lessons. The video resources are complemented by a broader range of other digitally converted materials: images of artifacts, text resources, audio files, maps, data sets, satellite and radar images, sonar and other seafloor images

Today, the speed of networks and most computers enables students and educators to access digital resources and a large variety of the tools used in multimedia production. Software is available to make digitizing video, photos, audio, and outputting edited movies to DVD, a fairly easy processes.Everyone takes in information differently. Some remember what they see. Some remember what they read, and some, what they hear. Windows on Maine is designed to help students and teachers find the resources they need, and present their ideas in a variety of interesting and memorable formats.
Visit Windows on Maine at: http://windowsonmaine.library.umaine.edu

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