Multimedia in the Classroom
Multimedia in the Classroom
Multimedia is a generic term which embraces a wide range of hardware and software products, from home entertainment systems to professional communications services. A multimedia presentation typically combines music, sound effects and the spoken word with still and/or moving images from film, video and photographs, as well as conventional artwork, computer graphics and animation.
Many people think of multimedia and CD-ROM as equivalent terms. Much valuable multimedia material is available on CD. But multimedia is very much more than that. While other manufacturers position multimedia as a resource for passive consumption, Acorn's approach is to involve the users in creating their own multimedia resources.
A quick survey of some of the material generated at schools under the Horizon project certainly seems to bear that out. From an in-depth study of an infant school carried out by the pupils themselves which produced 19 multimedia programmes at Frogmore Infants, through Itchin Sixth Form College's multimedia essay on Hitler, combining video, stills, text and data charts, to the sophisticated graphics of a natural history game produced at Isambard Brunel Middle School, the sheer potential opened up by multimedia in the classroom is a powerful argument in itself.
The premise of Horizon was that "the real opportunities promised by multimedia may lie as much in making presentations as in using them", in the words of the project report. This relates both to pupils and teachers: pupils can develop multimedia projects (like Itchin Sixth Form's Hitler), and teachers can develop tailor-made multimedia teaching materials which meet their precise curriculum needs and relate to the local context.
While the Horizon project concentrated on the creation of home-made multimedia applications within the classroom, there is a growing body of professionally authored multimedia software available for classroom use. Undeniably, many existing off the shelf CDs open up new possibilities in a well structured way, responding directly to the demands of the curriculum. ILP's award-winning Science disc is a particularly good example of a multimedia resource that allows pupils to do things which otherwise would be totally impossible. Experiments with rare and volatile substances like gold and caesium are brought to life in the school lab, breaking entirely new ground in science teaching. Science brings a new level of directness and excitement for pupils, and because ILP support their discs with exhaustive hard copy curriculum material, learning targets aren't bypassed.
The glamour of professionally authored multimedia titles may well have the effect of undermining teachers' confidence in creating their own multimedia resources. However, the overwhelming message from the schools involved in the Horizon project is how easy it is for teachers and pupils to build their own multimedia project. Tony Cox, the Horizon Project Manager, found that one persistent idea when we started was that it was just too difficult - the I couldn't possibly do it myself syndrome. In fact, both teachers and pupils find that the techniques are almost intuitive - and the technology needn't be prohibitively expensive. Of the 70-odd Horizon projects, only two incorporated video, and most were created using Genesis (for which Hampshire holds a county-wide licence). The majority of projects took the shape of pupils with hand-held mikes, recording their voices to accompany little stories they'd written and illustrated. That's how basic, and how simple, multimedia can be.
Part of the success of multimedia in the classroom is that children can build on skills which they already have. Today's pupils are growing up in an information age, where Nintendo and Camcorders are a part of that growing up. Unlike previous generations, pupils today expect to be able to make things happen on screen - and they expect high quality. Multimedia allows children to use familiar technologies to create their own materials. For Tony Cox, that sense of ownership is a fundamental strength of classroom multimedia authoring. Pupils think it's important, because I did it, because it's mine. Tony likens the impact of multimedia to the first time IT was introduced into schools: the first encounter with IT had a magical effect on pupils. Now they've become blase - what Horizon did was to bring back the magic.
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