Chapter 9 - Integrating Multimedia as a Tool

There are various ways to incorporate multimedia into the classroom.  Students can create presentations to demonstrate and share what they have learned.  Within these presentations they can include videos, web pages, podcasts, audio clips, images and graphics.  They can also use these different forms of multimedia to research new information, record data, analyze the results, and then share and discuss the results with their classmates.  For example, students can use digital video or audio recorders to help them collect the information they are researching.  They can enter the data from the recordings into charts, graphs, and/or tables that they create (Morrison & Lowther, 2010).  When students organize the information in this way, it allows them to visualize, analyze, and present the results to the class.  This active interaction with the content of a lesson engages students and while enhancing the learning process (CITEd,).

An assortment of applications are available for students to use multimedia as a tool in the classroom.  They can create presentations in PowerPoint.  They can use a digital video camera to record video.  They can produce and/or edit video files in iMovie on a Mac or Windows Movie Maker on a PC (Morrison & Lowther, 2010).  More technologically advanced graphic design and editing can be performed using Adobe Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver (Peninsula College, 2006).

It is easy for students to get carried away and overfill their multimedia creations with shapes, images, and graphics.  This tends to distract the viewer and take away from the intended purpose of their work. One to teach this concept is to allow students the freedom to play with the technology and use whatever enhancements and modifications they choose to create their project.  Teachers and students can then examine the finished products together, compare them with professionally designed multimedia works, and discuss how well each one delivers the intended message and why.  After the first experiment with multimedia, teachers can then give students further direction on how best to arrange the elements of the presentation in order to accomplish the objectives (Morrison & Lowther, 2010).

References

Center for Implementing Technology in Education (CITEd).
       (n.d.).  Using multimedia tools to help students learn
       science. Retrieved June 2, 2011 from http://www.cited.org  
       /index.aspx?page_id=148

Morrison, G. R., & Lowther, D. L. (2010). Integrating computer

       technology into the classroom: skills for the 21st century. Boston: 

       Pearson.

Peninsula College. (2006). Multimedia communications. Retrieved
       June 2, 2011 from http://www.pc.ctc.edu/mmc/courses.html