As a pre-service teacher, I am eager to learn more about media—in all of its forms—to enhance my learning spaces. Media use in the classroom engages students, increases communication, and acts as a powerful tool for motivation and learning. This week we looked at Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning and defined the difference between interactive media, multimedia, and interactive multimedia. Below, I will provide examples of these different forms of media, as well as discuss their benefits and how they can effectively be used in a classroom setting.
Interactive Media
As described in our course, interactive media is any media whose outputs are affected by user inputs (Watt, 2022). Interactive media can be a really powerful learning tool because it encourages students to participate, collaborate, and take control of their learning. Gaming is a form of interactive media that can enhance many areas of the BC Curriculum. Gaming in education enhances creativity, problem solving, and digital citizenship for students. A few of my favorites are Minecraft and Prodigy. Bonus points: many interactive games for students are free for use in the classroom!
Multimedia
Multimedia combines two or more media together (2022). This could be text with images (slideshows, blogs etc.) or audio and visual media (TV, audiobooks, etc.). While combining text and images together, it is important to consider Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning and ensure that the corresponding words and pictures are presented at the same time (temporal contiguity) and that the text and visuals are close to each other (spatial contiguity) (Learning House, 2019). It is also crucial to not add too many visuals to text to minimize extraneous processing, enhance retention and maximize the efficacy of multimedia messages and learning (2019). An example of multimedia that I like to use when creating infographics for the classroom is Canva.
Interactive Multimedia
Interactive multimedia is multimedia, with an interactive component. Utilizing interactive multimedia in the classroom provides flexibility and agency for an array of diverse learners as well as increases engagement and collaboration in the classroom. I am a huge fan of introducing coding in the classroom and applications like Comic Life 3 and Twine which are great for students to create their own interactive multimedia such as graphic novels and interactive storytelling boards.
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I am learning the importance of media use in the classroom and look forward to digging deeper into the applications of media(s) to enhance learning, retention, and engagement for my future students.
References:
Learning House. (2019). Multimedia learning principles – wiley. Retrieved September 7, 2022, from https://ctl.wiley.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MultimediaPrinciples_Summary.pdf
Great examples, Sarah. I see that you’re starting to bring Mayer’s principles into the discussion as well. Temporal contiguity is an interesting concept to think about in conjunction with a branched scenario tool like Twine. In some branched scenarios, you might want to leave certain information out in order to mimic decisions where not all of the information is available. In that case, you would want the knowledge needed to solve the problem to be pretty solid in the students’ mind – possibly through some formative assessment ahead of time.
Hi Sarah! Great blog post. I particularly appreciate how you wrote the introduction to stand out and inform the reader what the post contains. The hyperlinks to your citations look great as well. Being able to click on your examples (such as Minecraft and Prodigy) enhances the experience of your post and gives me a great understanding of the examples you are referring to. I really like your idea of bringing coding into the classroom and having students create their own multimedia, rather than just interacting with it as a learning tool. This makes me curious about the future of learning with so many fascinating technological advances. The next generation will certainly be technologically literate!
Hi sarah!
I enjoyed the layout of your first blog and how easily everything was navigated. I especially enjoyed your introduction and how that ties into your previous experience. I also really appreciated you discussing an example of interactive media by the usage of games such as Minecraft – the hyperlink was a nice touch! which helps enhance creativity and critical thinking I think gaming can be so frowned upon and it’s great that your blog digs deeper as to why it’s in-fact the opposite! Looking forward to seeing how the future will lead with a more technological direction.