Thursday, June 12, 2014

Multimedia Project Creations

Allowing students to create multimedia projects at the end of a lesson or unit gives them a creative and engaging way to share their knowledge and understanding through the creation of projects.  There are many types of multimedia projects students can create to showcase their learning. Multimedia can defined as “he integration of media objects such as text, graphics, video, animation, and sound to represent and convey information” (Simkins et al, 2002, p.1).

A project that I have completed using multimedia was with my second grade classrooms the last two years is called "Piggy Stories".  In this lesson, students compare and contrast the different versions of the classic story The Three Little Pigs They will use what they learn during this process to write their own narrative.  Students will focus on voice, sentence fluency, and word choice in their creations.  When they have finished writing, they will use the web tool Little Bird Tales.  With this tool they will create illustrations for their story and then use the story they have written to narrate their story and produce a digital story version.  This lesson covers a multitude of Common Core standards for both Reading Literature and Writing, as well as a variety of NET-S standards.  
When I initially began planning for this project, I had to take a variety of pieces into account.  How was I going to embed technology into this project, how would I make it cross-curricular, and how would I create a lesson that allowed the students to collaborate, critically think, be creative and communicate their understanding?  I also had to take into account the web tool or program that would allow my students to present their digital story in the best way possible and to be able to share it with a larger audience.  Although we were using the same tool for our product, this tool allowed the students to be creative by using some choices.  They could illustrate their stories right in the program, or illustrate them by hand and upload them.  Besides using voice to narrate their stories, they could also add text so that it became a read aloud.
The next project I want to tackle at the beginning of school is to have one of my third grade classes help me write and produce a video on the history of our city.  This comes as part of the third grade curriculum but the resources are very dry.  As a group we will brainstorm the important pieces to include, how we can share these pieces, and the where we will research.  Students will each have an opportunity to create their part of the video whether its acting, a digital story, or virtual field trip into on of our historical landmarks.  I think that this would be a great way to jazz up the curriculum while also having the students take ownership of their work.  This will be something we can share with other elementary schools in our town and continue to build upon in the future.  
The use of multimedia in education creates opportunities for the students to share their knowledge in a creative and engaging way.  It has really played a key role in helping us improve and grow our curriculum.  Students are more engaged at the opportunity to create and because their creations can be so easily shared out with the world, they take pride in their work.
Reference:
Simkins, M., Cole, K., Tavalin, F., & Means, B. (2002, January 1). Increasing Student Learning Through Multimedia Projects. Increasing Student Learning Through Multimedia Projects. Retrieved June 13, 2014, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/102112.aspx





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