Digital Badge #H

By rdasilva | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

Expressing Creativity with Multimedia Technologies

Students are interested in technology so in a multimedia classroom teachers will be able to retain their attention longer therefore the opportunities for learning are increased dramatically. Some tools that can be used to help students learn successfully are PowerPoints, digital projectors, and document cameras. Most classrooms at this age have at least one of these tools. Teachers are moving past their boards and onto technology that they can provide visuals and sounds along with what they are teaching. PowerPoints can be used in many ways. Some ways to use this tool with students is to use images to generate class discussions, promote visuals on topics, display questions and comments, use slides as attention getters and many more. With so many ways to effectively use this tool to ensure learning I don’t see why teachers would not utilize it. I personally love power points. My favorite thing to do with them is develop my own PowerPoint learning games such as jeopardy. These games serve an educational purpose but because of the way it is set up children find it more appealing and pay closer attention. When I am a teacher I will be using PowerPoint all the time. I believe that multimedia tools are a must these days to lead students to success.

In this chapter some next generation presentation tools were mentioned that I find interesting.  Most of the tools I have become familiar with recently are new to me. There are a lot of different tools that can be used in the classroom that I had never heard of before this class. This chapter mentions tools like Prezi, animoto, and glogster. Prezi I have become familiar with while doing my digital badges but the other two I have never heard of. Glogster really appeals to me because it lets teachers and students create digital posters and I love posters. I plan to utilize many of the new tools I learned about in this class in my classroom. I find so many of them interesting and I can see how different learners will be attracted to different tools.

Using videos in the classroom are an effective learning tool. The reasons for this are because videos catch the student interest, there’s an abundance of resources for them, and they are a unique learning experience. I remember when I was in school I would get really tired of listening to my teachers voice and when videos were played I was thankful to hear a different voice. I really want to use videos in my classroom. What I have learned not to do with videos from observing other teachers has been to make them too long. I’ve seen teachers use videos that go on for too long and those lose the student’s interest eventually. I also want to make videos with my students. The school I work at uses khan academy to find important educational topic videos. These videos are person because they are made without showing people’s faces so there are no privacy issues and they serve an educational need. Khan academy is very popular in schools right now. 

Resources:

Robert W. Maloy, R.-E. V.-O. (2013). Transforming Learning With New Technologies 2nd
edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.