Students study multimedia and work on computers regularly at Balboa City School. In fact, we have so many computers we barely know where to put them. With two media labs, one for the lower school and one for the upper school, it is rare that a student doesn’t have the chance to get significant computer time.
Our classes use a teaching method called “Project Based Multimedia Learning,” which is defined as a “method of teaching in which students acquire new knowledge and skills in the course of designing, planning and producing a multimedia product.”
Project based learning (PBL) is a model for classroom activity that shifts away from the classroom practices of short, isolated, teacher-centered lessons and instead emphasizes learning activities that are long-term, interdisciplinary, student-centered, and integrated with real world issues and practices. This method of teaching is based on the results of the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project that specifically focused on project based learning supported by multimedia.
By multimedia, we mean the integration of media objects such as text, graphics, video, animation, and sound to represent and convey information. Student projects create technology based presentations such as a computerized slide show, an animation or a short video. Not surprisingly, our students with ADD are always on task in these types of classes!