How Interactive Multimedia Affects Young Children - Essay Example

How interactive multimedia affects young children: Introduction: Huge emphasis has been placed on exploring ways to enhance the learning and cognitive development process of young children over the past few decades. With the advent of technology, it has been possible to realize more realistic ways of achieving measurable improvement in the cognition of young children that is of huge help to them in their studies presently and professional development in the long run. “Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the concept of multimedia took on a new meaning, as the capabilities of satellites, computers, audio and video converged to create new media with enormous potential.” (cemca.org, n.d.). Among the various attempts that have been made to enhance the understanding and perception of students about the subject matter in the class, one particular method that has produced the maximum results involves the use of interactive multimedia in the educational setup. Interactive multimedia has served to raise the children’s interest in their studies manifolds by taking their concepts to a higher level. As the name implies, interactive multimedia plays a fundamental role in improving the interaction between the student and the subject matter under discussion in the class at a particular point in time. Interactive multimedia fundamentally involves the display of pictures and videos about the subject on a screen fixed at a certain place in the class so that all students can easily watch it with minimal inconvenience to the eyes. Stuff to be displayed is carefully selected from the jargon of videos and pictures available in the market. Student’s perception is facilitated to the extent that they tend to identify relations between individuals characters in the picture which is certainly more than wasting energy in realizing what the characters would be. Conventionally, it takes so much time and energy to understand the basic concepts that a child can highly think at a higher level. Moving pictures displayed in the multimedia technology solve this problem for the children. Energy saved this way shows up in the form of enhanced interest and zeal in the studies. This improves the children’s performance in the studies down the road. Hence, with the incorporation of multimedia technology in the delivery of education, young children are able to do much more than they would be in the conventional educational setup without the use of interactive multimedia. Through in-depth analysis of the matter, it is argued in this paper that interactive multimedia plays a huge role in enhancing the cognitive skills of young children and their performance in education is increased significantly. Why many young children loose interest in studies without the use of multimedia? Conventional educational setup has maintained a large volume of students that have lost interest in studies because they find their efforts non-productive. What has weakened their interest in studies is lack of achievement of the desired results despite having imparted great energy and time to their studies. This has been so because despite their efforts and attempts to learn, the process of learning has been hindered by a lack of ability to develop concepts about various traits of the subjects. For example, young children face a lot of difficulty imagining the characters of a story in an English Literature class and their definition of relations between individual characters is so weak, that they can hardly go further in perceiving the proceedings of the story. Similarly, in a Chemistry class, young children encounter problems thinking what an atom might look like? What do ions look like? How the ions would be moving in a charged liquid? It is fundamentally because none of us has ever seen such a thing as atom with our naked eye. Same holds true for the realization of a cell in the human or plant body in a Biology class. Has any of us ever seen one of the cells that make up a human body? Or else DNA that is a fundamental part of genes? Obviously not. We can not be sure about the imagined image of something we never saw personally. Therefore, different students tend to develop different images of the same object in their minds that they never saw. Accordingly, concepts about the object vary as per a variation in the image of it, as imagined by different students in the same class. Having discussed this, it becomes obvious why many young children start to loose interest in their studies. After having dedicated so much time and effort in nurturing the initial images of unseen objects in their minds, they ultimately happen to realize that their approach towards the object had been irrational right from the very start of the session. Same reflects in the exams as the students incur lower grades. How does learning occur? Learning is fundamental to the development of an appropriate concept of the world in which we live. Learning, both active and passive, necessitates an individual’s complete engagement with the subject at hand. When an individual devotes his/her time and energy to the studies, the results should principally surface in the form of improvement in the skills, materialization of concrete concepts, addition in knowledge, and development of an ability to reflect upon one’s experiences so as to come up with something of huge value and significance both to oneself and to others. Effective learning enhances a student’s interest in the studies and he/she develops an urge to know more. Learning is fundamentally materialized mutually by an individual’s expectation from a subject and his/her practical experience in it. Learning occurs in an organized process of construction of knowledge that nurtures the intelligence. The process of construction of knowledge involves various stages that include but are not limited to receiving information through oral or written message from the sender, processing the information in the mind so as to customize it as per one’s level of understanding and perception, analyzing various traits of the information, searching for loopholes in the information received and analyzing its level of completeness, and reflecting upon the concepts built as a result of continued storage and analysis of information in the mind. As loopholes are discovered in the information received, one comes up with questions about the matter, and indulges in social interaction. Having spoken to individuals from the society and discussed the questions about the information previously developed, one tends to develop concrete concepts about the subject. However, the process of learning as discussed here is indeed, a tedious practice and does require a lot of time and dedication on the part of the individual seeking knowledge. There are likelihood that the individual would become tired in the middle of the taxing process and abandon the idea of seeking knowledge to the end. This is where interactive multimedia plays a big role in that it saves an individual all that energy, that is otherwise wasted in clarifying concepts through indulging in lengthy discussions with members from the society. Having seen a picture or video in the multimedia in the class, a student develops correct concepts about the subject matter right from the start, and the concepts strengthen as the individual learns more and more about it with the passage of time. In this way, multimedia saves an individual’s time and effort and one can make better use of both. In addition to the usefulness of interactive multimedia in enhancing the cognitive skills of students, it relieves a student of many other challenges he/she faces in a conventional educational setup that does not involve the use of interactive multimedia. There are many students who find difficulty adjusting to the style of their mentor. Some teachers are humble enough to keep explaining the same concept to the children as long as not a single child is left in the class who does not have a clear idea of the discussion going on. Yet there are teachers who place more emphasis on the completion of curriculum as defined by the authorities within the time frame previously set. In such cases, it becomes extremely difficult for a teacher to reduce his/her speed to match that of the students following him/her. Either way, one aspect has to be compromised upon, either quality of education or the extent of completion of the desired coursework. Moreover, an educational setup without the use of interactive multimedia makes the students used to gaining education in a particular class from a particular teacher. In such cases, the room of a class, distance between the blackboard and students, and number of students in a class has a big role in the maintenance of an environment in the classroom that is conducive to the delivery of concepts to the students. Students used to such a system can not adjust everywhere and may develop huge difficulties in a changed atmosphere in a more critical time in the later years of their education. This, if happened, can bring seriously harmful repercussions for the students. Use of interactive multimedia inculcates flexibility in the children with respect to the environment in which the education is delivered to them. Through its use in the educational setup, young children can adjust well to any environment because all they have to concentrate upon is the multimedia whose quality remains the same everywhere and at all times. Children do not have to adjust to the teaching skills of their mentor once they are used to the multimedia. Not only this, use of multimedia inculcates capability in the students that is necessary for them in order to comply with the rising demands in technological skills in the present age. It is not unusual for a student who is attuned to receiving education through multimedia to develop good knowledge of the use of computer as well. It is not just the matter of education of students, use of interactive multimedia in the educational setup increases the children’s competency in dealing with the technology that proves useful to them throughout their educational and professional career since a vast majority of works require good skills in operating computers and such other inventions of technology. Impact on psychology of learners: Interactive multimedia has huge positive impacts on the psychology of learners that shows up in the form of rapid shift in the child’s mood and inclination towards studies. What fundamentally upgrades multimedia educations as compared to traditional educational setup is that moving picture keeps the viewers interest in the subject alive for hours. They can maintain their concentration for prolonged periods of time. Children can easily recall what all they studied in the class merely with the help of glances of moving picture carved in their memory. Not only does the use of multimedia facilitate the learning process of young children, but they also develop a liking for the characters they visualize on the screen. Moreover, children tend to adopt the same methodology to deliver their presentations in the future, which gives them an edge over others that are not attuned to the use of multimedia. “The most effective multimedia provides learning experiences that mirror real-world experiences and let learners apply the content in various contexts.” (Shank, 2005). Conclusion: Multimedia has been successfully employed as a means of conveying education in many advanced countries of the world in the present age. Children have been able to enhance their cognitive skills with the advent of multimedia in the educational system. Children who have gained maximum benefit from the incorporation of multimedia in education are the ones suffering from Autism. Use of interactive multimedia in education enhances the computer skills of children sufficiently enough so as to progress in an information based culture of the modern world. (Mishra and Sharma, 2005, p. 307). Teachers prefer to make use of multimedia because it provides them with an opportunity to overcome the shortfalls of conventional teaching methods and allows the students to apply what all they learn from their texts. (Wang, 2009). According to Gilliver, Randall, and Pok (1998), the multimedia not only facilitates learning but also proves cost effective in that increased usage decreases the cost per use. References: Gilliver, R. S., Randall, B., and Pok, Y. M. (1998). “Learning in cyberspace: shaping the future”, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 14(14): 212-222. Retrieved from http://www.outofthebox.nu/interactivity/03.htm. Mishra, S., and Sharma, R. C. (2005). Interactive multimedia in education and training. UK: Idea Group Publishing. Shank, P. (2005). The Value of Multimedia in Learning. Retrieved from http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/valuemedia/The_Value_of_Multim edia.pdf. Wang, T. (2009). “Educational Benefits of Multimedia Skills Training.” International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology - Spring Conference. ISBN: 978-0-7695-3653-8. www.cemca.org. (n.d.) Multimedia as an Educational Tool. Retrieved from http://www.cemca.org/EMHandbook/Section2.pdf. Read More