Think about your favorite video/computer game or cartoon for a minute. Close your eyes and create a picture of it in your mind. What colors do you see? What sounds do you hear? What kinds of motion do you see? What are the words on the display? Lots of different things are happening all at the same time, aren’t they? You see colors and characters and movement while hearing voices, music and sound effects. Pretty cool, huh? You’re using multimedia!
|
 |
|
 |
 The combined use of text, pictures, sounds, movies, and/ or animation |
Experience multimedia at its wildest with www.froguts.com (click "demos" to try it out), created with Flash, from Macromedia (a technology that allows users to create their own animations.) Warning: It’s so real you might feel a bit queasy! While viewing this interactive virtual frog dissection, try to identify the following:
-
Still pictures (photographs, drawings, etc. that don’t move)
-
Music, Sound Effects
-
Animation (moving images)
-
Text (words, sentences, paragraphs)
Another amazing example of an online resource that uses multimedia is the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives for Interactive Mathematics. They use mostly Java applets to create online tools that pull you into a virtual learning environment. Wow! You can stretch rubber bands across Geoboards, hide a ladybug under a leaf, and more!
Some examples of multimedia presentation software that you probably have at your school are:
- PowerPointHyperstudioKid Pix
- Inspiration or Kidspiration
These great tools are easy to use and they contain built-in sounds, pictures, and animations (moving pictures) that you can pop right into your presentation. If you don’t have any of these programs, contact Susan Krug, (email: krug@inspiration.com) the North Carolina representative for Inspiration/Kidspiration (800-877-4292) and ask for a free demo CD-ROM. Also, don’t forget that most company Web sites offer free demos to download directly to your hard drive. Choose a learning adventure from the list below that matches the software you have available at your school. Get ready to learn tons of multimedia "magic" tricks!
- PowerPoint Tutorial, by actden.com
- HyperStudio Tutorial, by the Acadia Institute for Learning and Technology
- Kid Pix: How to Create a Slide Show, by New South Wales Dept. of Education
- Inspiration or Kidspiration: Check out how other students use Inspiration to share their knowledge on topics like Rainforest Animals, Measurement or Friction and to plan their own multimedia products.
Now that you’ve experienced a tidal wave of multimedia today, take a couple of minutes to let it all sink in. Imagine the possibilities with the technology that’s available to you now!
Think about your yearlong research topic -- the very topic that is most important to you. Daydream about creating a multimedia product on your topic. Get your creative juices flowing by completing the sentences below.
- The topic for my yearlong research project is ____________________(my most favorite topic). I would like to have pictures, photographs, clip art, and/or diagrams of __________________ to show others and to use in my multimedia presentation.It’s nice to see pictures related to my topic, but it would be even better if you could hear or listen to _____________________________.
- It would be totally cool if I could download movies or animations that demonstrate or show ________________________________ . (something related to your yearlong research topic)
 DreamBuilder |
|
 Trouble Terminator |
