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eZedia in the Classroom
Project Ideas


On one of our other pages, I have suggested some projects for the classroom and/or for staff development. What I want to do here is just put together a simple list of ideas that might act as a springboard for ways in which you can incorporate multimedia in your classroom. Please note that I said "incorporate," not "teach." If the focus is the notion that a teacher will have to stop everything to focus on teaching a software package alone for several weeks, it isn't going to happen. The list of "additional" items to be crammed into the curriculum seems to get longer. Let's shift that focus to where the multimedia authoring software becomes a tool for communicating - ideas, thoughts, learning, questions. Instead of thinking of eZediaMX as an "add-on," ponder for a moment what happens in the classroom when eZediaMX becomes the integrative environment.

Picture your students in your mind. With the opportunity to use a multimedia authoring environment, which of your students, that you've been trying so hard to reach, might suddenly become engaged in their own learning? What would it be like if the energy for learning came forth from them? What would the long-term implications be of a child who currently has no interest in school becoming involved and excited about their learning?

ASCD (http://www.ascd.org) has just published a new book for educators who are wondering what this new classroom experience might be like. The book, "Increasing Student Learning through Multimedia Projects," written by Michael Simkins, Karen Cole, Fern Travalin, and Barbara Means is a small, friendly volume that looks at this topic from a teacher perspective. They are sharing what has been learned from years of practical experience garnered by real teachers who decided to give it a try. Their advice is keep it simple, but what's great is they talk about how to do that. For those who haven't had a chance to see multimedia authoring in action in a classroom, this is a friendly place to start. There's also a cd of good information that was published previously - "Project-Based Learning with Multimedia" - that is also from ASCD.

Before I go to my "springboard" list, I want to share with you a conversation I had in a rural district a few months ago. While visiting the school, I had the opportunity to meet the principal for the first time. She knew I had been asked to pop-in to meet with one of the elementary teachers to talk about multimedia in the full-range of elementary grades, primary, on up. An intelligent, dedicated woman, she remarked that she had the chance to see eZediaMX being used with one of her classes. I made the normal social chit-chat of "that's nice" as I hadn't been aware that the teacher I was there to see had already been using eZediaMX as a tool. The principal came back at me with the statement that I didn't understand. She had seen it being used because one of the students had spotted her and dragged her in to see what he had done. I applauded the student's enthusiasm. She looked at me and said that I still didn't understand. The young boy who was so excited by what he had produced had a discipline referral file that was 3" thick by the time he was in grade five and this was the first time she had seen him proud of anything he had ever done. Now, I understood!

Just a few ideas in terms of how you can use eZedia in your classroom:
  1. show the movement of troops across a map
  2. demonstrate a process in science
  3. improve public speaking by having the students record short audio or video segments to include in their projects - the short pieces don't overwhelm students and also provide an opportunity for them to grasp the key issues - (the Pet Project uses this option)
  4. create electronic yearbooks (eZedia has a real one on their cd that you can use as a template for your own)
  5. digital scrapbooks of field trips
  6. electronic books recording events at the school
  7. "parent night" interactive presentations on your classroom that can run on a computer outside while individuals are waiting to meet with you
  8. "meet your classmates" where students interview each other and produce an e-book of the class to encourage the concept that they're all unique and have ways to contribute to the class
  9. digital story books - primary students can produce their own, as well as older classes adopting a primary grade and producing more elaborate pieces that might be their way of demonstrating knowledge of folk tales for an English class
  10. interview seniors in the community and record their stories in a multimedia environment
  11. tackle local neighborhood issues using eZedia to pull the pieces together to produce a more powerful story
  12. use it to compare and contrast animals, places, events - the fact that you can set up interactive navigation means you aren't stuck with a linear approach
  13. student portfolios demonstrating/displaying their best work
  14. student portfolios pulling together their achievements for submission to a scholarship request or an employer
  15. use eZedia as a practical demonstration of teamwork skills
  16. teachers can use a template to pull together samples of student work and growth throughout the year to show parents 
  17. record family events - weddings (an example is at the eZedia site), anniversaries, celebrations of all types
  18. create a digital cookbook - how much more powerful to show how something is done than to simply provide written instructions
  19. a hobby/craft e-newsletter that is available through cd - being able to demonstrate the steps makes it easier for others to grasp your message
  20. use a project to involve students in the political process by having them follow different candidates at local, state, and national levels and collect speeches, stories, and news clips to see what ideas are being communicated and how they are being communicated. Students can compare and contrast different campaign styles.
  21. compare and contrast international coverage of news events through the press of different countries so that students begin to be aware that news isn't pure reporting that there is a perspective brought to each segment that influences what is reported.
  22. annotate a science graph
  23. teacher portfolios (eZedia has an example at their site that we've modified and used with our students in our grad class in the past)
  24. take people on a tour using a map as a background
  25. create a history time line
  26. create a pictorial autobiography for primary children
  27. Science
    a. Environmental conditions change throughout the year. Students can follow an animal through the seasons, showing what happens during each period. For migratory creatures, there can be an additional section on a project that highlights the similarities between the creature’s regular environment and the environment that they migrate to. It should allow for some interesting comparisons in geography and weather, among other features. Here’s the chance to use pictures, video clips, audio files, and maps. It also gives the students the chance to record their own audio or video clips giving their take on certain aspects.
  28. B. Contrast what happens during hibernation, migration, and dormancy among common animals in your area. Compare the common types of animals in each category.
  29. C. Environmental issues are relevant at all grade levels. Consider how human behaviors impact the environment and how, in turn, that impacts the animals in the area. Call up your local university and Wildlife Department and ask a biologist to speak to your class. Have the students take pictures of their neighborhoods and interview people to see what they are doing to protect the environment. Most Sony Mavica cameras can store about 60 seconds of video on a single disk making them quite handy if you’re concerned about technical issues in terms of bringing in video. (Actually - it’s quite easy no matter what you use. There are directions on this site that might help you under the Video link.) Take advantage of using pictures and video clips to reinforce the types of animals that are being impacted when there are significant environmental changes.
  30. Earth Science allows us to get up close and personal with the world around us. Consider such things as having students:
    a. Look at the type of rocks and dirt in their area. If possible, hook up with a classroom in a very different area of the country or the world and contrast the color of the soil and the types of rock in the two vicinities. The many types and colors of something so common as dirt can be quite startling. For children used to rich, deep black dirt, the fact that there are some areas where the dirt can be a deep, bright orange is quite a revelation. Students can take pictures of their dirt, do experiments and share results, and use the multimedia environment to record the connections between the type of soil and the agricultural practices in their area.
  31. B. do a multimedia research report on the layers of the soil Again, try to link your students with others to compare and contrast the differences.
  32. C. Interview a rock. Pet rocks used to be quite popular. How about celebrity rocks?! Interview a nice piece of granite and have students discover the inside world of igneous rocks. Contrast that with sedimentary rocks and metamorphic samples. Let their imaginations open up and use that to relate science content. Use the power of eZediaQTI to quickly post the interviews to the web or use the logic tools in eZediaMX to document the process that produced the igneous rocks, etc.
  33. D. How about going on an earth materials hunt? Have students create individual multimedia projects to show how we use these materials in our daily lives. Take advantage of multimedia to chronicle the different ways these materials are used around us.
  34. E. The Sun-Earth connection - this would be a great multimedia project that could combine simple science temperature probes to compare the effects of heat from the sun on various earth materials. Students could record the experiments and the results and create a multimedia science report.
  35. F. Explore changes in the Earth’s surface through human intervention. Every area has someone with historic photographs. They might be ten years or it might be a 100 years. Students can compare and contrast the changes shown in the photos compared with pictures they take today and try to explain how these changes came about. Did a highway go in? Did a housing development spring up? Use the logic tools in eZediaMX to have the students document their view of how these processes occurred over time. By combining the container object and the branch object with the path, pictures and illustrations could spring up along the time line. The idea is the very same (but used in a different way) as is illustrated in the Cross-Country project at this site.
And the list will go on.


 















Last edited: October 8th, 2003

E-mail: Jane