News
One of the greatest recent innovations in the digital world has been the Nintendo Wii. This device has transformed the landscape and introduced the world of digital interaction to a wide audience outside the traditional gaming user group of 18-30 year old males.
Just a few tweaks and we can make paper resources into digital ones, can’t we? Well no, and here’s why:
As specialists in digital media for education, one of our core activities is the design and production of digital resources for educational publishers. These publishers, typically, are traditional organisations whose businesses have been built on the publishing of educational books and other printed matter.
Now, in the 21st century, with technology sophistication and the ubiquity of digital media in all of our lives (partially due to the demise of analogue TV by 2012), these very same publishers are having to turn their attention to the publishing of digital media. For many publishers this has initially meant the production and publication of digital media resources linked to published books. In time, more publishers will produce resources that do not have a book element and are complete digital resources in their own right.
For most publishers the transition is a pretty painful one because it involves more than just tweaking a few processes. It involves very real and significant change.
The pace of technological advancement is fast, often bewilderingly so, everybody knows that. In some areas we have experienced an exponential growth in the take up of aspects of those advances, for example in the use of mobile phones having now reached something like a staggering 95% penetration.
In other areas the take up of the technology is slower. In schools, despite the availability of ring fenced monies to ensure that all schools have interactive whiteboards, modern computer suites and broadband connectivity, the actual application of these technologies is relatively slow. Mobile phones, for example, whilst ubiquitous outside school are generally banned, or banished to lockers during school hours, in most schools.
But beware, this is all set to change. The comforting pace of gradual digital integration into schools is set to become a torrent and below we give ten good reasons why.
Read on…
Most people know about digital media, have at least heard the term even if not everyone knows precisely what it means. On the whole, people know that their mobile phone is digital, that their TV, if not digital now will be by 2012, that the internet is digital.
What many people don’t know is how this may change their lives. For the purveyors of applications of digital technology there is another dilemma – how to deal with the integration of the different digital platforms with regards to meaningful multiplatform applications.
Whilst all digital platforms share the common fact of being ‘digital’, the requirements for the development of content and applications and the dissemination of these can vary quite radically cross platform.
It would be exceptional for all the cross platform expertise required to be invested in a single place, which is why at Vivid we believe that the way forwards is through collaboration.
Even the mighty BBC, whilst investing in some of the expertise in house, collaborates with other suppliers to ensure a full 360 degree offering. Read on…
NEC, 28th. Feb – 2nd. March 2008
Another interesting forum event for the education sector, The Education Show caters for practitioners with many CPD seminars and suppliers exhibiting. But it also provides an opportunity for others to see what’s happening in the world of frameworks, curricula and School Improvement; what the buzz is with VLE’s, voting systems and interactive whiteboard applications; a catch-up on the National Healthy Schools Programme; and did you know it’s the National Year of Reading?
Read on…
In response to difficulties some people have been having in sending us large files, Vivid has started to develop an online file manager.
The Vivid File Manager will be a password protected area of the new website where users will be able to upload large files to us that would normally be too big to attach to an email.
This entirely browser based solution will eradicate the need to wrestle with setting up unreliable FTP clients, allowing anybody to send us files from any computer connected to the internet (assuming appropriate permissions to upload).
Watch this space for when this new feature will be available for use.
Many people who’ve heard of Adobe Flash (previously Macromedia Flash) have experienced it as irritating splash screens or banner ads on web sites, or as a way to make a web site beautiful to the eye but often completely unusable. This is by no means the whole story - some companies have seen the potential of Flash to deliver a user experience not possible using ordinary web technology, and we have seen web sites that allow you to decorate a room using colours from a particular paint range, or construct and order your own custom baseball shoes. Read on…
Thank you for coming to our new website.
We will be at BETT 2008 and if you are interested in what Vivid have to offer and you will also be at BETT let us come to you for a chat.
Just contact our Managing Director, Mick Landmann, with your contact details, stand number and preferred times (if any) for Mick to come and see you at your stand (or indeed anywhere else).
Look forward to hearing from you.
