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February 07, 2006
The Pachyderm Expedition: The Beginning
For a few years, I have been searching for the sometimes elusive Pachyderm. I first heard of the Pachyderm via an electronic communiqué. They indicated that the Pachyderm could be seen for a brief time during a dialogue day at Paradise Community College. I was intrigued, but unable to make the trip to see the Pachyderm.
Over the last few years, I have heard more about the Pachyderm – I thought I might catch a glimpse last January when a beta version was released; but yet again, it slipped right by me and I still had not seen it.
Finally, I caught a glimpse of the Pachyderm last June. You might think that I had this encounter on the Savannah’s of Africa; but you would be mistaken – I actually caught a glimpse of the Pachyderm on the coast of Oahu. Just yards from the Pacific coast of Waikiki Beach, it came into view. At the New Media Consortium conference.
According to the MCLI, Pachyderm was:
“originally developed by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) to create a tool that museum curators (non-technical people) could use to easily build engaging web, CD-ROM, and kiosk exhibits built upon the digitized assets in the museum's database. Pachyderm projects are created via a web interface, a collection of pre-built interaction templates and are presented as Flash format. SFMOMA have created an impressive number of examples.”
What I found most impressive about Pachyderm was how versatile the templates were and how easily they can be aligned for educational uses.
Now, let me tell you, once you have met Pachyderm, you want to learn more about it. My mission this semester is to learn everything I can about Pachyderm. I plan to read as much background material as possible about its development, I want to research examples of how it has been used and I want to learn how to create learning objects using it.
I will continue to post updates of my expedition in search of the Pachyderm!
Bon Voyage!
Posted by lyoung at February 7, 2006 11:39 AM in category
Pachyderm Project
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Comments...
Have no worries, intrepid elephant rider.
As NMC members, we have a number of free acounts to use on the hosted version of Pachyderm:
http://www.pachyderm.org/news.html#NMCrelease
For specifics, we suggest you try channeling Rachel Smith at NMC, as she is tre true elepant herder (when she is not engaged in World of Warcraft)
Posted by: Kilgore Trout at February 8, 2006 10:20 PM
