Education today is much different than it was even ten or twenty years ago. Technology is one of the biggest things that has stepped in to make it so much different. Each and every day new technologies mean new advances in the way we’re able to teach our young people. The interactive and always connected media devices that have become so mainstream mean that education is required to evolve and keep up with the changes.
That should be viewed as a good thing, though. Multimedia provides a way for students and teachers alike to gather, create and share a range of materials: photos, audio and sound, video, photographs, charts, text, slide shows and interactive programs. This promises that not only will education continue to evolve for the students, but also for educators, schools, coaches, libraries and others.
PublicMultimedia will strive to provide valuable information and resources for teachers and others who are interested in putting shared multimedia to use. The combination of the internet and multimedia gives us an extremely powerful tool for education. You can instantly share or collaborate an array of media in all kinds of different ways. Let’s look at things you could be sharing…
Text
Of course, text has been and will continue to be one of the strongest forms of education for some time yet. But now you can provide important information and tie elements together in a variety of ways. A creative way to get your students to write more is to require a blog. An assignment once a week or month would be for them to blog about the topic at hand – a mini-essay essentially. As the year progresses, they’re naturally building a portfolio of work to demonstrate their skills and understanding of the topic that they could use in the future.
Sound
Sound goes a long way for educational purposes. You can easily add voiceovers to slide shows and videos to get more information across quicker and clearer. Many people have a hard time learning just by reading. But with multimedia, the internet and social media you can easily create learning materials to fit any type of learner.
Videos
Representing your information through video can be quite powerful. Even if it’s just a video created by Power Point slides pointing out instructions how to do something, some people are much more visual learners that learn by watching someone else do it.
By using social media or cloud computing, your students are able to view the videos whenever is convenient to them. They can watch, pause, close, open, re-watch any time they want.
Video is also an excellent way to create more interest in a topic. If you’re teaching something that’s considered a boring subject by many, you can insert video links to portray interesting facts or ways this knowledge can be applied in real life for personal gain or benefit.
If you’re teaching something that has conditions or scenarios that could be too dangerous to portray in real life, video is one suitable way of showing that in action without putting anyone in danger.
There are tons of video sharing sites and with each come different levels of privacy. You could easily create a YouTube channel for each of your classes or topics and set the videos to private where students need the direct URL to view them (though we personally don’t see any harm in basic educational videos being open to the public).
Interaction
Some people still resist multimedia learning because they insist there needs to be interaction. Indeed, it’s been shown that interaction helps stimulate the learning process. But luckily, there are many ways you can do this today. There are video creation programs that can require a user to click on a link, fill out a questionnaire or any number of other things. There are sites and software programs that you can even create interactive multimedia for sharing on a website or even Facebook.
Hopefully you can begin to see the unlimited possibilities of what you can do with multimedia, social media and the internet to further your students’ chance of success. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding more information, tips, ideas and resources for you. So please do bookmark us and check back.
