Innovative Ideas - in a Nutshell By Stephen Lee, The Georgian
Creative thinking, a market niche and lots of hard work would probably be the best way to describe INNOVA Multimedia Ltd.’s first copyrighted CD-ROM. Poetry in a Nutshell is the Stephenville company’s first interactive educational software and a distribution agreement with Irwin Publishing Limited of Ontario means the programs will soon be available in schools. "Irwin Publishing Limited is an educational house of distributing to schools all across Canada, but they also have international connections," says Joe Wiseman, executive director of marketing with INNOVA. "That’s good for us because the program can be used in any classroom in the English speaking world, the elements of poetry are the same everywhere." Irwin also has connections to retail markets and believe Poetry in a Nutshell would do well in stores, however INNOVA wants to try it out in the schools first. John Maddock is the company’s executive director of product development. The choice of poetry for their first CD-ROM was his. "I come from an English background," he says. "I have 20 years in the field and was in the process of writing a book on the elements of poetry. It just moved from paper to multimedia. Neither Mr. Maddock or Mr. Wiseman have any background or formal training in the use or programming of computers, however they say that is not necessary for the type of business they operate. "We sub-contract the computer work out to Newtel Information Solutions Limited (formerly Newfoundland and Labrador Computer Services)," says Mr. Wiseman. "It’s obvious we wouldn’t be able to do it all from here and experts in the field recommend you don’t try to create multimedia by yourself." The actual process from start to finish is too long and complex to go into, however Mr. Maddock says INNOVA is responsible for coming up with the actual content and ideas for the programs. "We come up with a project like poetry and we storyboard it," he says. "What I mean by storyboard is that we actually draw every screen that will be seen by the user and put them in a logical order. We then come up with the learning outcome, what we expect the program will accomplish." Next the duo have to decide on what music, voiceovers, text, photographs, graphics, illustrations and animation they wish to use. This is one of the most time consuming and expensive parts of designing any program as everything used must be by permission of the copyright holder. Everything is then sent off to be put together into a functioning program. During this process INNOVA keeps in constant contact with NISL and Irwin Publishing and between the three they come up with a finished product. With Poetry in a Nutshell almost ready for the store shelves, INNOVA are busy working on four other programs in the "in a Nutshell" series including Poetry in a Nutshell 2. So why would two former teachers get involved in designing computer software? With the computer industry growing at an astronomical rate money may have something to do with it, but there is also the saying ‘once a teacher, always a teacher’. "We want the people using our programs to learn from them," Mr. Wiseman says. "Studies show people retain 20 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what they see and 50 percent of what they see and hear. However, their retention goes up to 80 percent for things they see, hear and interact with and interaction is what multimedia is all about. "The schools have these great tools in computers and we want to provide them with the software to use these tools for learning. By using multimedia we can bring poetry alive." With four more programs in the works, students can expect to see many more of their subjects coming to life and that’s it, in a nutshell.
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