Week 4 - Multimedia in the classroom

A teachers ability to engage a student drastically aids in the education of said student. Hernandez-Ramos and De La Paz (2009) tell us that in the modern day history classroom, students are bombarded with an overwhelming amount historical information and facts, which leads to more students losing attention in class and less students picking to do history as a subject in school. A method of teaching which involves the use of Multimedia aims to retain students attentions and get them enthusiastic about their learning as well as improve their creativity in the classroom.

Whilst multimedia isn't a new phenomenon of our classrooms, technology is a wonderful tool that can be used to vastly improve our ability to incorporate it. (Frey & Sutton 2010). Whilst Multimedia does an amazing job at captivating students and keeping them interested in lessons, Frey and Sutton (2010) talk about it's use in projects for students, and allowing them to explore multimodal methods in assignments to help bring out their creative sides. They talk about the development process being more of a non-linear, flexible, problem solving process, allowing students to engage creatively with the topics that they have at hand.

Take for example stop motion studio. This app allows students to create movies with stop motion, letting them see their ideas come to life in front of them. Students have the ability to take their photos, frae by frame, and merge them together to create projects. The app is incredibly easy to use and in my short experience with it I was able to make the video you see below.

Another extremely useful piece of technology that can be used to make a simple project into one that uses multimedia is photoshop. Photoshop allows for

students to take images and edit them in any way they wish, also allowing for creativity to be fostered. The main limitations with photoshop compared to stop motion studio is the fact that it is a lot more complex to use, and may be suited for older students, however, this means the skill ceiling is far higher and if a student is able to learn how to use it well, they can create some truely amazing images that bloom from creativity.

It is the your job as the teacher to incorporate technologies like this to give students the opportunity to show their creative sides and develop their technological skills.

Reference list:

Frey, B. & Sutton. J., M. (2010) A Model for Developing Multimedia Learning Projects. Journal of online learning and teaching. 2010;6(2)

Hernández-Ramos, P., De La Paz S. (2009) Learning History in Middle School by Designing Multimedia in a Project-Based Learning Experience. Journal of research on technology in education. 2009;42(2):151-173. doi:10.1080/15391523.2009.10782545