Photo of MATC in Orem, Utah                                                  The Elements Unearthed

   This project is being conducted by students at the Mountainland Applied Technology College. MATC is a campus of the Utah College of Applied Technology (UCAT), a state funded college for vocational training that serves over 70,000 students each year in Utah. Instead of receiving credit and degrees, UCAT students receive certificates of proficiency and completion for such programs as Nursing Assistant, Veterinary Assistant, Dental Assistant, Information Technology, Business, Chef Preparation, Pharmacy Technician, Cosmetology, CDL, and many others.

   The Elements Unearthed is a project of the Media Design Technology program at MATC taught by David V. Black. His classes are a combination of students from local high schools (who receive high school and concurrent enrollment credit) and post-high school students who receive certificates. The program is open-entry, open-exit and runs year-long. Students attend classes for three hours each day, five days per week, and learn multimedia development and design skills using such software as Adobe Photoshop for image editng, Illustrator for vector illustration, and InDesign for desktop publishing; Daz3D Bryce and Carrara for 3D modeling and animation; Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut Pro for digital video; Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash for web design; and Adobe Director for interactive programming. In addition to learning these software packages, each student must design and develop their own personal multimedia project and participate in a large-scale group project.

   The Elements Unearthed is an opportunity for the students to learn how to cooperate and collaborate as a group using these Wiki pages. As they develop their scripts for the video podcast episodes, they will learn how to work using Web 2.0 technologies, how to design and share what they've learned with the world, and how to document some fascinating topics that involve local companies and artists, thereby enhancing their business through PR exposure.

   In addition to this project, students at MATC have created a full-length documentary on the history of Utah AM radio in the 1950s through 1970s entitled "AM to FM: Three Decades of Radio in Utah" which aired on Salt Lake City's PBS station, KUED Channel 7 in Jan. and July, 2007. Previous to that, they were chosen as one of 50 Mars Exploration Student Data Teams through the Jet Propulsion Laboratoty and NASA. They downloaded scientific data from Mars orbiting probes to predict the weather patterns on Mars during the first six months of the rover missions and tracked the orbits of those probes. Our students also developed techniques for reading Mars MOLA altitude data and created images and animations of the geography of Mars.

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