Academic Multimedia

Multimedia must-see: Climate Wisconsin

Over the holidays I received an email from Finn Ryan, a multimedia producer at Wisconsin’s Educational Communications Board. I was immediately curious because I normally hear from producers at newsrooms and multimedia students. Finn pointed me to a new educational multimedia package that they just launched, titled “Climate Wisconsin.” With 10 videos, two interactives, teaching tips, background material and more, this site is a wealth of information and inspiration.

What I love most about this site is how they partnered with outside organizations to enhance the quality of the site. Specifically, in this project Scott Pauli and Drew Garza designed the site, Two Six Code did the web development and Pitch Interactive, which was also featured on our past company spotlight series, did the interactive development. As you can see from the beautifully clean site, partnering with these companies was well worth the investment!

Moreover, I am so excited to see an increasing need for academic multimedia. Discovery Education is at the forefront of this movement, and I love seeing others are also recognizing the importance of alternative teaching formats for use in the classroom.

I asked Finn to give us some insight into the production process behind this impressive project:

“The production of Climate Wisconsin began in February 2010. I worked closely with a team consisting of a photographer/videographer, two designers, an interactive developer, a web developer, and an illustrator/animator. The multimedia videos were created over the span of eight months, the interactives took three months, and the website we designed and developed in four months. All stories are supported by research in collaboration with the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts. Background essays and teaching tips were developed in collaboration with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and Center for Biology Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Climate Wisconsin received funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Wisconsin Educational Communications Board (ECB) is a state agency that supports Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio. In addition, we create educational resources and professional development opportunities for the Wisconsin education community. Traditionally, we have produced educational programming for broadcast. We are moving quickly towards web based content as more users, especially in education, are moving this way. For this reason, Climate Wisconsin is somewhat of a departure from our previous work in that it was produced purely for online use. It is designed for 6-12 grade, but is relevant for a much broader audience.

This is my first major project since joining ECB. I’m currently working on a multimedia project focusing on environmental science in Wisconsin modeled after KQED’s QUEST project.”

Thanks so much for bringing this project to my attention, Finn!

UPDATE: The Digital Naturalist recently ran an excellent in-depth Q&A with Finn going into detail about traffic to the site, production process, and more. Long read but well worth your time!

Other posts that might interest you:

• SBS launches multimedia site “Dragon Children”
• NFB and The Goggles launch interactive documentary Pine Point
• Behind the scenes: “Soul of Athens: Our dreams are different”

© 2012 Innovative Interactivity (II).
Download II's Security Policy (PDF)