With multimedia projects, students can communicate information through text, graphics, video, sound, interaction or animation.
Why use multimedia in the classroom?
Creating multimedia projects can:
- Engage and motivate learners
- Support information acquisition, assimilation and processing
- Foster collaboration and communication.
- Promote thinking and reasoning
- Stimulate imagination and creativity
- Accommodate diverse learning styles
- Address a variety of instructional purposes
- Create real-world connections
- Give students a voice and choice
- Provide an opportunity for students to take ownership and pride in their work.
Best Practices for Multimedia Use and Production
Having a process for students to follow when creating multimedia projects can make a multimedia production project run much smoother and results in higher quality projects. Here is a general outline of steps students might follow when creating a multimedia project:
- Come up with and develop an idea for their project.
- Research the topic.
- Write a script.
- Storyboard the project.
- Collect or create the images, video, and audio for the project.
- Edit the project.
- Share their work and get feedback.
Tools for Creating Multimedia Projects
There are many great tools available for teachers and students to create multimedia projects. A fairly comprehensive list of web tools and apps may be found here: eMINTS Tools for Schools: Creativity Tools or our collaborative list of Presentation and Digital Storytelling Tools.
A few tools we recommend are:
- PowerPoint & Office Mix
- Microsoft Sway
- Adobe Spark
Additional Resources:
- Edtechteacher. Video in the Classroom.
- Newingham, B. (2010). Movie-Making in the Classroom. Scholastic.
- ALTEC at the University of Kansas. Kid’s Vid.
- Morra, S. (2013). 8 Steps to Great Digital Storytelling.
- Starr, L. (2010). The Educator’s Guide to Copyright and Fair Use. Education World.
- Engram, J. Benefits of Using Multimedia in Education.
- Porter, B. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom.