Add value to your website.(Forum Focus: Local Associations)

NOW that the content and structure of your site is complete, you can turn your attention to dynamic elements that will bring added value to your user's experience. The last column addressed traditional types of multimedia elements including sound and video. Multimedia can be useful for teaching and reinforcement of concepts introduced in the classroom or lesson. For example, it may be helpful to provide MIDI files of exercises or original compositions on your website. Both Dreamweaver and FrontPage make it easy to include sounds and videos in webpages. More complex materials including interactive quizzes usually require some knowledge of web programming. And perhaps the most complex multimedia tool is Flash, which is used to create interactive movies and animations. The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT, http://www.merlot.org/) has a collection of reviewed teaching and learning resources that clearly demonstrate effective use of multimedia for teaching purposes. (Select music from the list of discipline communities.) In any case, it is important to be sure the added content somehow provides information that can't be presented in any other way and that the material is compatible with a variety of browsers and platforms.

As multimedia materials have become more standard, many web authors are turning to interactive technologies including blogs and podcasts to create a more dynamic online presence for their visitors. A blog (short for web log) is a series of online journal entries to which others may be allowed to respond. Blogs are easy to create and use and typically are free of charge. Newest additions are positioned at the top of the web page, so visitors are always aware of the most recent content. In addition, some blogs are syndicated or send out automatic notifications when content is updated. Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker maintains a blog at "The Rest Is Noise" (http://www.therestisnoise.com). In addition to his own musings regularly published in The New Yorker, he also has an extensive list of links to similar resources ranging from opera to music theory. This is a wonderful place to start learning about how blogs can be an important part of discussion about the arts. To learn more about creating your own blog, visit any of the free blog sites including http://www.blogger.com, http://www.myblogsite.com or http://www.wordpress.org.

Podcasts are somewhat analogous to lectures or radio shows. A podcast is an MP3 file that is "fed" to the user who must then use podcasting software such as iTunes to collect the file and play it back. As podcasts become more popular, online services including Yahoo! and GOOGLE also offer podcatching capabilities. Once ...