Teaching Multimedia in School Curriculum - Essay Example

Teaching multimedia in school curriculum The use of multimedia in school curriculum, at present is extremely significant to make both the and the teachers interested in learning process. Learning process by multimedia lasts long in their memory due to the enjoyment they get from these curriculums. Combining more that one media, for example the audio and video media in one programme to provide interesting effect, may be termed as multimedia. The students are very much interested in visual things in their school curriculum. For this reason interesting images and illustrations are provided in their textbooks. The use of charts, black board and different aid material viz. TLM (Teachers Learning Materials) in the classrooms from decades, itself provide the need for introduction of multimedia in learning process. The effective use of multimedia in teaching and learning helps the children to develop a range of skills. It widens the knowledge and understanding of ICT (Information and Communication Technology). Childrens writing skills improve as they write and rewrite. Editing tools make it easier for them to draft and redraft their work. Motivation is raised because children can write for a real audience and because the presentation of work is impressive. Use of different drawing packages helps them draw pictures and using the digital cameras, video recording and recording their own voices and adding them in their presentation makes this an enjoyable medium for them to work in (Pillai). Shneiderman et al. (1995) discuss the effects of introducing technology into the classroom in terms of the paradigm shifts that result. All of the existing systems they discuss, and all of the attempts we know of, have one common feature that we are trying to avoid. Technology in the hands of the student usually translates into a workstation at each desk. This approach is fine, even necessary, for classes that involve computer-based activities (such as programming). We want to investigate the usefulness of alternative interfaces that are less intrusive and allow natural handwritten note-taking, such as pen-based laptops, PDAs, tablets, or palmtop PCs. According to Hill, M & Novelli, J (1994) “the simplicity and power of multimedia encourage teacher creativity and self-directed student learning. Its also a whole lot of fun!”. The learning by fun is always encouraged due to its emotional effect on psyche with no tension of learning and memorizing encumber in school syllabus for the examinations. The mind of the students will not be tired of knowledge and they will enjoy learning and will be attracted toward higher learning process, with a tendency to become good scholars in future. Hill, M & Novelli, J (1994) find out that “at one time, multimedia was considered a very technical venture.” with an impression of taboo for common people. They further say “when teachers talked about using multimedia in the classroom, they probably imagined a gaggle of sophisticated components being orchestrated by a human with five or six arms.” They remember the past days as “those were the days when just about everything you needed to explore, learn, and communicate about a topic - using multimedia - came with its own separate electric cord.” Now they are fascinated with hopes as “Today, computers come already equipped with everything you need, such as speakers for sound, vivid color, the ability to play video clips, and even internal CD-ROM drives.” They promote cautions to use it properly “but the power of multimedia is not in its components. Its real promise is that it gives control to the user. With multimedia, students can navigate and explore information for themselves within a rich, multisensory environment. A single multi-media workstation in a classroom can beckon students to open a new door to their own learning potential.” "The most exciting thing about multimedia is that it reaches all the senses," says Jon Young, chairman of the department of Technology/Cognition at the University of North Texas, Denton. "Students are given more fodder for their imaginations." He sees another aspects of learning "Im comfortable enough about multimedia to know that it is making a difference in learning," Young says. "Something good is definitely happening with multimedia." Gregory D et. al. established hypothesis “that tools to aid in the capture and subsequent access of classroom information will enhance both the learning and teaching experience” To provide better aid and effective environments the design of multimedia course is to be interactive. For this some points have to be kept in mind for development of such curriculum. Schwier, R., & Misanchuk, E (1993) have given proper guideline in this field. According to them “because of the similarities between computer-based multimedia and web sites, it seems useful to include guidelines for design which have been developed for multimedia. Some general principles derived from multimedia design include: Simplicity, Consistency, Clarity, Balance, Harmony & Unity. Clark & Mayer (2003) in Personalization Principle recommend using conversational style “your material is easier to understand when you address the students directly. So, you should use the word "you" to address your students in explanations and tasks.” The use of word ‘you’ will provide a close intimacy with the learner and they will learn with superior endeavor with the feel of heart to the teachers. About my project My chosen topic is MY COUNTRY and my family album. As I am very much interested and fascinated to provide information to the audience about my family and my country, I have chosen audience from all group of age. The audiences have little information about my country normally through fictional pictures, so I will provide them better information. As I am using content free software I need a topic that will not be complicated for my targeted audience to understand, but at the same time it should be full of fun and entertainment. My topic is designed for children at the age group of eight, who reaches either year five or six in primary school. The project contains text to understand and sets out challenges for the audiences to comprehend; I took this challenge for this age group. To start my project I needed to authorise and consider many options, such as what designs, layout, text, pictures or drawing, sound and videos I am going to include in my project. Before using the 2create software for my project, I made a planned project using Microsoft word. The rational behind for this idea was that I could exercise my ideas and create my project in advanced in the way I imagined. I felt having a planned and ready project, will enable me to save time in the classroom, as all I had to do was to create a project, which was a replicate of the one I already had. The criterion of this project was to use ten main content pages to complete the project. In the home page there is a little girl’s picture with a smile welcoming the audience. She introduces her family’s originality place. The second page is about Rawa (the baby) with different pictures with text introducing her when she was one month, three months, and so on. Third page is about her parents picture when they got married, pictures in their honeymoon, pictures with the baby. Fourth page is about Grand parents pictures and she said that nany tells me a story and if you want to read my story click on nany picture and that will link to the story (numbers). Fifth page tells about mama’s family, the pictures of the uncles and aunties were added, colourfully, and so on. Sixth page informs about the language we speak in Algeria. Seventh page is about the foods in Algeria. There are various types of food and when you click on the food’s picture, it will tell you the name of that food. Eighth page provide the information about the religion in Algeria. Ninth page is about Algeria. Tenth page is about the Algerian traditional cloths. There are pictures of Rawa wearing traditional cloths and other ladies wearing traditional cloths and when you click on the picture it tells you the name of the dress. The sound was recorded for introduction in the project. I also wanted my audience to be aware of Algerian culture, so I added information about traditional food, clothing, language and religion. Once I had planned the layout of each card and had gathered all the information, I began to arrange the information on each card. I wanted to use text and images on most of my cards, however I found that when using 2create software the space on each card was limited, therefore I had to add less text on some cards and less images on others. Due to the space on each card I had to fit my buttons in wherever there were space, which meant that I was unable to have a similar layout of my cards all the way through the project. I used a range of colorful backgrounds to make my project look attractive and decided to use a user-friendly non-linear navigational system, which allows a higher level of thinking. I added buttons on each page to allow users to go forward and back. I made my multimedia project interactive by adding sounds, images and animation, ‘good educational software must be active, not passive.’ (Furht 1999 p.376) I used sound files in most of my cards; I have recorded my own sounds using a microphone. When recording my sound files, I had to make sure that I spoke slowly and clearly thus allowing my audience to understand me. In addition to this I had to make sure that the sound files were not too long, as once a sound file had been clicked there was no way of stopping it. The sound continued to be played even if I went to the next page. I thoroughly enjoyed creating a multimedia presentation, as I learnt many new ICT skills and further improved existing skills. ICT can support geography in many ways to enhance teaching and learning. The use of multimedia in classrooms is endless although there are some limitations. The use of ICT and multimedia software offers a new, fun, enjoyable, interactive and creative approach to teaching and learning. …………………………………………………………… References: Clark, R. C.; Mayer, R. E. (2003). E-learning and the science of instruction. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Gregory D, Abowd, Christopher G, Atkeson, Ami Feinstein, Cindy Hmelo, Rob Kooper, Sue Long, Nitin ``Nick Sawhney & Mikiya Tan 1996, Teaching and Learning as Multimedia Authoring: The Classroom 2000 Project, GVU Center, College of Computing, EduTech Institute & Office of Information Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, NEC Kansai C&C Research Laboratory, Osaka, JAPAN, viewed May 14, 2009, http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/c2000/pubs/mm96/index.html Hill, M & Novelli, J 1994, Multimedia in the classroom - benefits to teachers and students - includes related articles - Special Section, viewed, May 14, 2009, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0STR/is_n9_v103/ai_15411531/ Pillai, KS, Mutimedia-A Developing trend in language teaching, Viewed May 14, 2009, http://www.tamilnation.org/digital/tamilnet01/siva.pdf Shneiderman, B, Alavi, M, Norman, K and Borkowski EY 1995, Windows of opportunities in electronic classrooms. Communications of the ACM, 38(11):19-24, November 1995. Schwier, R., & Misanchuk, E 1993, Interactive multimedia instruction . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications, Inc. About: Teaching and Learning as Multimedia Authoring: The Classroom 2000 Project Published in the Proceedings of Multimedia 96 This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 96.1-e (April 9, 1996) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, Nikos Drakos, Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds. The translation was initiated and modified by Jason Alan Brotherton on Tue Sep 10 11:08:15 EDT 1996 Read More