Multimedia in the Classroom

Text, animation, graphics, video, sound, and pictures are all different media. Any combination of these is considered multimedia. Multimedia includes projects in different formats such as music, video, documentaries, and storytelling. These projects have to be well planned out and designed from the very beginning. Once students choose their topics, the planning should begin. It's crucial that teachers instruct their students on how to plan and organize their multimedia projects. Storyboards are instrumental in this stage of the process.

Individual students can create multimedia projects; however, the the process lends itself better toward cooperative groups. Roles at the middle school level could include a managers, researchers, writers, and editors. I believe collaboration and teamwork are just as important to learning multimedia (if not more important) than the actual technology skills themselves.

As specified in the Texas technology TEKS, middle school students are required to design and create interdisciplinary multimedia presentations for defined audiences including audio, video, text, and graphics. The following websites have a wealth of information for teaching students about multimedia.

Teaching Students How to Create a Presentation
Guidelines
Power Point Tutorial
Power Point Rubric
Another Rubric for Power Point
Adobe Digital Kids Club
10 tips in Taking Great Pictures
Royalty Free Music
Gimp download