Group Two Tools – Multimedia

The tools used in group two are all to do with including multimedia in your online spaces. This includes images, audio, digital video and podcasts.

When it comes to including multimedia in your blog, website or wiki, discretion has to be used for the item to be effective. Listed here are some advantages and disadvantages to multimedia:

Advantages

• Conveys information that could be hard to describe with text alone
• Caters to a wide range of learning styles
• Promotes interest and breaks monotony of reading
• Can help people with learning disabilities
• Have access to things that might not be readily accessible in that location (eg. Watching a symphony orchestra play on Youtube).

Disadvantages

• Can be distracting, especially with overuse
• Can require a lot of bandwidth
• Lack of interactivity (with these particular examples)

Images

Embedding pictures in text is an excellent way to break up the monotony of endless reading. Pictures can be used to very quickly illustrate a point. In my KLA (music) this has a lot of potential – an image of sheet music, how to hold an instrument, correct posture, significant musicians, etc.

One of the engagement activities for this task was resizing an image with MobaPhoto. This software was incredibly easy to use, quick and very effective. I blue-toothed a photo of my dog (why my dog you ask? Because I love my dog) off my phone to my laptop and resized it with MobaPhoto. The whole process would have taken less than 2 minutes. The photo can be seen on my wiki, but I will also include it below:

There was an optional activity involving image manipulation. I did not complete this activity as I have had a lot of past experience using Adobe Photoshop and Fireworks. Here is a couple of photos I edited when I was in grade 8 to trick my friends into thinking I had caught a much bigger fish than actually happened. Both photos show the original and edited size. 

While I think this skill is useful, and many programs create beautiful light, filters and effects, I do not think it is directly applicable to my KLA.

Audio

As a music major, audio is obviously directly related to my KLA. On one page of my website, you can see how it directly applies to teaching music where I give audio examples of the differences between the concepts I am trying to explain. Rather than use the freeware programs listed, I have a couple of very expensive DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) programs that can be used to produce studio quality sound and music. These programs include Digidesign/Avid Protools and Ableton Live. Teaching the use of these programs is an excellent use of digital pedagogy in music as they are industry standard programs.

One application that I often use audio recording for is when I am driving. I really hate when you are driving and have a really good idea about something but have no way to write it down and subsequently forget. Now when I am in my car, my phone can start recording when I give a voice command, allowing me to record my voice and only have to press stop. I have since now taken that idea and any time I have a good musical idea, I record myself singing or playing it so I can write it down when I get the chance.

On my placement, the grade 9 class I am working with is studying film music. Rather than record my voice, I recorded this short example (and others) of film score I have composed to get their creativity flowing by asking scaffolded questions as to how, why and when in a film they might apply it.

(The study notes say that audio cannot be uploaded to a blog, this is not true. It can be embedded with custom HTML code).

Video

As far as I am concerned, video is the most versatile of the multimedia formats listed here. While there are situations where a picture or audio clip will suffice or be more appropriate, a video can be used for many of the same and more instances.

In music education, video is excellent for:

• Watching software tutorials
• Online lessons, showing musical concepts
• Watching live professional performance to understand performance techniques
• Follow along score with notation or karaoke style lyrics (see below)

Here is an example of a follow along score from Youtube:

Some of the disadvantages of using video include:

• Large amount of data download
• People sometimes try to add too much (can be distracting)

Podcasts

Podcasting is an extension to either audio or video, in that it is an audio or visual recording released episodically. This provides many opportunities for learning, both when following or creating podcasts. Podcasts give access to expert knowledge and peer review, making podcasts an excellent constructivist learning tool. The main difference between podcasts and any other video or audio file is that you can subscribe to podcasts as an RSS feed (see my post about blogs for my views on RSS). The word itself is a portmanteau between iPod and broadcast. Considering that this is the purpose they were designed for, podcasts are usually tailored to be listened to on iPod like devices.

Some examples of how this could be used when creating podcasts would be:

• Recording a band or individual practice session every week to monitor progress (music)
• Create a series of short episodes about the unit of work
• Creating a series of episodes based on a novel

Some examples of how using podcasts can be effective:

• Following a series about the topic
• Reviewing other classes/classmates
• Listening to recordings of the lesson/lecture

Many sites/repositories have excellent educational podcasts available as resources. These sites include:

• iTunes U
• ABC EdPod
• And many others that can be found by simply Googleing educational podcasts