Anna Wolfe Essay Digital Artifact #2 Solar Energy: Solar Power Solar power has always been fascinating

g to me. The idea that it is endless, powerful and free is very appealing. I have embraced solar technology but really did not take the time to learn much about how it can be harnessed. This digital artifact helped me expand my knowledge. Solar power is clean, renewable and although has a higher start up cost its rate of return is amazing making it the epitome of sustainability. Solar power is an under utilized resource and expanding consumers knowledge of the topic might help continue its growth and utilization. I used a presentation program, called Prezi, in the first digital artifact I created. I wanted to expand my exposure so I chose to use a web page program, called Weebly, for this digital artifact. Having never created a website before, I was anxious as to whether I would be able to portray the knowledge in a relatable way while newly learning the information and technology. I enjoyed the creative aspect of this project and found this platform interesting. I first explored Richard Mayers Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning while creating my first digital artifact. I wanted to continue to explore this theory in this artifact as well. Richard Mayers Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning is a brainbased approach that outlines how people learn in an e-learning or multimedia environment. (Clark, & Mayer, 2008) I have added a quick reference for the principals in Richard Mayers theory utilized in my first and second digital artifact. Multimedia Principle: words and graphics together contribute to deeper learning

Contiguity Principle: words should correspond with graphics by being placed closely to one another on a screenin order to assist with a stronger transfer of learning

Coherence Principle: distracting stories, graphics, sounds, and extraneous words should be eliminated from e-learning

Personalization Principle: learners experience a heightened social presenceare more likely to attend to the information

Segmenting Principal: content should be broken into small chunks in which the learners can control the rate at which they access the segmenting information (Clark, & Mayer, 2008) My intention for this webpage was to compile data about solar energy and solar

power from various sources and present them in one location. I wanted to provide the reader with an understandable and fluent basic understanding of solar energy and solar power. I choose not to explore the arduous nature of the technology or the extensive costs of various products because I wanted to present the concepts in a non-technical approach to allow the reader to have easy access to the information. The application of Richard Mayers theory mentioned above can be seen throughout the webpage. The colors and layout were intentional in that I wanted to give a sense of excitement and characteristics of the topic. Two additional principals in Richard Mayers theory that can be loosely associated with the presentation are the Modality Principal and the Redundancy Principal. The Modality Principal states that people learn more deeply from words and graphics and the Redundancy Principle states audio narration alone should

explain graphics, rather than audio narration in addition to onscreen text. (Clark, & Mayer, 2008) The choosing of graphics that closely correspond to the topic, i.e. products listed where products are shown, incorporated the Modality Principal. The Redundancy Principal was explored by providing three online videos that the viewer could reference to allow a deeper understanding of the topic. The viewer can read the information and then see a video further exploring the topic.

Works Cited: Clark, R., & Mayer, R. (2008). E-Learning and the Science of Instruction (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.