During the week, observe the use of multimedia for teaching/learning around you. Have you encountered a particularly effective website? Did you observe a multimedia installation in the mall or other public area? Comment here on a particularly effective (or not so effective) use of multimedia for learning. Based on your reading this week - what elements were effective (or not) and why?
Example:
As I was waiting to attend a meeting in Miller Hall, I sat on a bench outside of the planetarium. Even though I had my computer and was checking email and attending to a bit of work, I noticed a large HD flat screen mounted to the wall. On it was a rather powerful presentation on the solar system - no sound - just an intense black background with vivid images and some text. The text was used carefully - I noticed fonts that were consistent, easy to read and placed in close proximity to the item being described. Each screen progressed slowly, so that I could read and look carefully at each image without feeling rushed.
I saw a fascinating website (www.thewildernessdowntown.com) where you plug in your parents' address and it is incorporated into a video. The website played music while images of my mom's house popped up. It was great to see the house. It made me say out loud, "How did they do that?" Hope you give it a try!
ReplyDeleteYesterday I visited UREC for my daily workout. As I was checking in I noticed a large flat screen mounted at the entrance to the building. My experience watching UREC's presentation was quite the opposite of Dr. Kellison's. The presentation had at least 3 different sections showing various events going on at UREC this week. Each section had scrolling events that passed too quickly to casually read. I suppose that the creator of the presentation wanted to suggest the fast moving pace of the workout center by moving the text and graphics similarly. Clearly they would want to share as much information as possible to each patron during check in. Overall, it was an effective presentation for those looking for a specific piece of information, but not for the casual reader.
ReplyDeleteThe Autodesk Education Community (http://students.autodesk.com/) is a site I use often for my particular subject area. I always show my new students this site and get them registered so they can acquire the free student software. When showing my newest class I noticed the new Flash intro and thought it was a great tool to get the students attention and peak their interest in what other students are doing with Autodesk's various tools. The intro starts with a nice use of typography and motion with the theme of "Change" this leads into an interactive gallery. The gallery allows the user to control what is essentially an interactive slideshow. My students loved sliding around the gallery and looking at the various images. This lead to great discussions on things like "How did they do that?" and "Are we going to learn to do that?". I really think the bold sans serif font grabs the viewers attention and the consistent theme of "Change", especially in this day and age, pulls the user into the message.
ReplyDeleteAt the high school we use a great program called Power Teacher by Pearson. It's powerful and it just works. However, during this past week (1st week back with students), I've been trying to tweak some things and adding options to my grade book. There were two items that contained language and some math that I wasn't fully understanding so I used the help file and thus follows my criticism: the grade book help file comes up online and it isn't user friendly at all. The term search function wasn't pulling adequate results and any results that show up rarely contained any pictures. I guess my point is that if the 'help function' on the grade book is supposed to help educate the user on problem solving/ troubleshooting, then why is it so dry, wordy and more time consuming than anything else. This is what I found most ironic with help functions of software also; they are sometimes quite unhelpful and much too wordy. Google seems to have great help files on much of their content including videos and concise wording.
ReplyDeleteI too agree with Eric's post about software programs help menu not being so helpful. I currently teach this grade and my school uses this great program called PowerSchool. We currently use this program for our gradebook, attendance and demographics. However the program also has many other excellent features that our county doesn't take advantage of. I feel as if we don't get our bang for our buck. When clicking on the PowerSchool logo on our desktop you sign-in and and then we are able to see the features that this program offers. One excellent tool that we don't utlize is the lunch choice form. Each day I am required to submit a lunch choice form for my students. This is such a waste of paper. PowerSchool offers a lunch choice form online that submits directly to our lunch accounts. I could project the form on the smartboard and the students can digitally make their choice. If we pay for the service why not use it. Software programs often come with a lot of features, perks and extras. In this ever changing world of technology why not take advantage of the programs being offered. Besides-I forget to print the lunch forms half the time and so that makes for an even bigger mess each morning!
ReplyDeleteThis week in another class we met in Carrier Library to go over some research techniques. The Education Librarian, Jonathan, had created a video to introduce himself, and various techniques of searching for scholarly (and dependable) information. In his video, he incorporated social media (facebook), vibrant colors, a fast-paced tempo, as well as some very valuable information. His video was effective in that it held the classes attention while giving information that would normally not be as interesting. The fast pace and colors were appealing to both the eyes and ears, and his transitions were easy to follow and captivating. At the end of the clip that we viewed, many people asked "How did you do that?" or "Did you do that yourself, was it hard?" showing that he had sparked an interest within the class. It was also evident at the end of the video clip that everyone was aware of the dangers of using wikipedia and google for scholarly searches - important pieces of his presentation!
ReplyDeleteThe world has been growing in recent years. Apple has great devices such as the iPad. A new one is suppoedly being manufatured in Idia for extremly cheap. It is a touch PC. They are stressing educational and Medical uses for these devices. Kepping all of your work in a tablet instead of lots of books. Make it connectable and interactive and it can open more than just new minds.
ReplyDeleteLike Saadia, I too was present for the digital media presentation on research at Carrier Library. It was incredibly engaging not only because of the bright, colorful pictures, but also because of the music being played in the background. It was aesthetically pleasing and utilized many different techniques. He used snapshots from websites or computer programs and colorful fonts that made them noticeable and easy to read. It also had an interesting audio component that was both humorous and informative. It was definitely effective and made a slightly dull topic very interesting. I especially liked this video and found it to be effective because it was geared towards many different types of learners. It was universally designed in that it had audio, visual, and written components. He made the information relevant to the audience and that is crucial to ones learning experience.
ReplyDeleteThis past week was the students' first week back at the elementary school that I work at. As I was in a fourth grade classroom replacing a power cord on one of the computers, I noticed the teacher showing her class what their weekly schedule would be. She was using an ELMO (Electric Light Magnifying Object) document camera which was hooked up to her computer, which was hooked up to an overhead ceiling-mounted projector. She placed a piece of paper with their weekly schedule on it under the ELMO and immediately, the image of the paper was projected on the whiteboard in front of the classroom.
ReplyDeleteBecause the image was projected to the front of the classroom (instead of each child looking down at a piece of paper), the teacher was able to keep the students' attention to the front of the classroom. The children seemed attentive to the image on the board, as well as to their teacher, who was standing next to the image and pointing out various activities within their schedule.
I believe this was a very effective use of multimedia because it enabled the students to focus on the actual schedule and on their teacher instead of on a piece of paper in their hands.
Lin - That's a really interesting website! It does take awhile to load, but it is really neat!