TIE 544 - Curriculum Applications of Hypermedia/Multimedia
 
  Course Description
  Artifact
  Reflection
  Standards
Course Description:
In this course, students use authoring tools to develop hypermedia learning activities, applying instructional design principles. Students review trends, research, and copyright issues in use of hypermedia/ multimedia in educational settings. Students apply concepts and knowledge to assist P-12 students and teacher colleagues in using authoring tools and instructional strategies.
 
   

Artifact:
The artifact from this course is a Nutrition hypermedia project, created with a free software program called Scratch. Scratch is a visual programming language that was created at MIT and allows you to create interactive presentations.

Click on the Scratch cat above to download the Scratch program.

Reflection:
As part of this Course by Arrangement with Professor Arlene Borthwick, I researched three different free multimedia programs: Squeak, Scratch and Alice. All of these programs incorporate visual programming and allow a great deal of user interactivity with the final product. My first love in the area of multimedia was HyperStudio, back some fifteen years ago. I loved HyperStudio's ease of use, its built-in draw and paint features, and the sense that whatever I wanted to do was possible with a little problem-solving. I enjoyed Scratch and decided to use it for my project because it had some of those same features. Squeak was a blank page that required me to reinvent the wheel with every new project. Alice comes with a number of great resources, allowing the user immediate success, but has no ability to create my own characters and images. Scratch was a nice balance between the two.

The advantages of using Scratch are its easy intuitive interface, its price (of course!) and its drag and drop environment. In order to do the programming of a "sprite," the user must drag the almost puzzle-shaped pieces from the left side of the interface to the middle or working area. Connecting pieces together creates scripts that the sprites will follow, such as ones controlling movement, appearance, or sound, for example. Sprites and backgrounds can be imported or created within the draw environment, or the user can select from the Scratch library.

The biggest disadvantage to using Scratch is the limited ability to share your presentations with others. If you wish to share your Scratch project, you can post it to the Scratch website, which is easy to use and access, or the viewer can download their own copy of Scratch and see how you put together your project. If you choose to post to the website, you need to be careful because there are a number of projects on the site that are not appropriate for use by K-12 students. There were also some limitations on text and background editing that give it a much less sophisticated look than other authoring programs.

I chose the topic of nutrition because, in addition to doing this project, I did some data analysis as part of a research project for Dr. Borthwick. In her research, Dr. Borthwick worked with elementary students who used Create Together (another, not-free authoring program) to make interactive multimedia presentations for their peers. I decided to replicate this experience with the use of a different software package and compare how the two programs' features influenced not only what I chose to include and how I chose to present my information to my audience.

While Scratch's interface is relatively easy to use, the project was nonetheless fairly sophisticated. Using six different backgrounds, 64 "sprites," or objects within my project, and 267 scripts for those sprites, I created a project which can assess a student's ability to make appropriate food choices within a day's diet. The project will customize according to the age of the user (from 5-11), and will keep track of how many calories, fat, and sugar grams are consumed, and whether the user has chosen enough fruits and vegetables, based on what foods are selected.

I enjoyed working with Scratch and found this to be an incredible learning experience. The level of user choice and problem-solving involved would make this a very effective program to use with older elementary and high school students. Higher level thinking skills are required to make the sprites do what you envision them doing. One of the most interesting parts of using the software come from resolving the user's purpose with the software's capabilities. For example, I really wanted to have the viewer drag and drop items within the interface but quickly learned that in presentation mode (which is the online mode), viewers can not move sprites. This required that I come up with alternate methods of having my sprites get from one place to another; now my sprites either glide when clicked, disappear, or disappear and move appear somewhere else on the screen.

After learning a new software application I am always thinking about how it could be used with students. I could see this program used in a number of educational contexts, but primarily as a presentation tool or as a means of assessing understanding. Older students could use it to create games or quizzes for younger students; students could make presentations to show their understanding of a topic and teachers could present content to students; its interactive component make it ideal for assessment.
 

Standards:
The standards covered in this project include:
  Technology Facilitator Standard One (TF-I.B)
  Educational technology facilitators demonstrate an in-depth understanding of technology operations and concepts.
  The creation of this project required an in-depth understanding of technology operations including the programming language of Scratch, which requires the use of scripts to control objects within the program. The importing, creation and editing of objects and backgrounds within the project also demonstrates TF-1.B.
   
  Technology Facilitator Standard Two (TF-2.A,B,C)
  Educational technology facilitators plan, design, and model effective learning environments and multiple experiences supported by technology.
  This project models appropriate use of a technology tool in an educational setting (TF-2.B). This project would assess students' understanding of nutritional concepts such as which foods contain a lot of fat or sugar, the importance of eating fruits and vegetables and the concept that all food, even low-fat foods, should be eaten in moderation. Multimedia is an area where users' skill levels, as well as special needs of students, can easily be taken into account when planning learning experiences and expected student products, thus supporting diverse student needs (TF-2.A). This project also came about after the evaluation of several similar programs, judged on their suitability and accuracy for use in the K-12 classroom (TF-2.C).
   
  Technology Facilitator Standard Three (TF-3.A,C)
  Educational technology facilitators apply and implement curriculum plans that include methods and strategies for utilizing technology to maximize student learning.
  This project was created to model a student assignment, where learning standards were addressed. (TF-3.A). The use of a multimedia project, with its use of sound, images, problem-solving demonstrates a great degree of creativity and higher-order thinking skills (TF-3.C).
   
  Technology Facilitator Standard Four (TF-4.A)
  Educational technology facilitators apply technology to facilitate a variety of effective assessment and evaluation strategies.
  Projects such as this, created by a student in a classroom, are one example of effective use of technology to assess students' understanding. If a student didn't have a good understanding of nutritional concepts incorporated here, he/she would not be able to go for a swim (the positive outcome at the end of the project). If students are unable to get the program to do what they need it to do, the teacher can use that authentic data as a measure of their problem-solving abilities. (TF-4.A)