Multimedia as an Educational Tool

Multimedia

Multi -Multiple

Media-Medium of communication

Multimedia, or mixed-media, is a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, or interactivity content forms.

The development of multimedia has dramatically changed the lives of many people.  It transcends various operations electronically as it suggests a diverse way of dealing with it. From this, it brought several applications into a newer approach making people much motivated and makes things done easily and faster. 

First top is in Education, student can easily access pertinent information in shorter time frames. They can use multimedia to validate their results and obtain immediate feedback. In Entertainment such as Online Games, it lets feel the gamer a new experiences because it incorporates fast action, vivid colors, 3D animations and elaborate sound effects which are essential to entertainment.   

Lastly it became an important tool in Business, because multimedia can provide a global communication. It provides an opportunity for every company to go international and to distribute it products and services directly to the end user at a reasonable price.
Generally, the development of multimedia has paved its way of evolving usual operation and transactions into a better way in a very attractive and persuasive manner.

Multimedia provides a better way of learning. Example is that it neglects the nonlinear way of processing of information because, with its hyper linking capability, it presents the content in a way that allows the learner to jump from idea to idea into such non linear way. Because multimedia applications are user-controlled, students can proceed at their own pace and focus on those areas that are most interesting and helpful to them. Multimedia can be extremely motivating by allowing the user to take charge of his/her learning experience. In addition, it can provide immediate feedback, adjust the level of difficulty and evaluate skills.

One of the greatest things about the use of multimedia is the fact that it helps students of all levels achieve a higher standard. Students can all design a PowerPoint presentation regardless of skill level. The beauty of multimedia such as PowerPoint is that students that need to be pushed can be by making their presentation more complex. They can add animated GIF’s, add sound, or even add movie clips. These students could also utilize a scanner to transfer pictures from books to their presentation. Students who may have learning disabilities can still achieve the standard of completing a presentation but on a simpler form such as adding some text with a few JPEG pictures.

Another way multimedia can be used with teaching comes with the use the web in an inquiry based study known as a web quest. With a web quest, students research to answer a question by linking to various websites. In the end of their quest, students present their information through a PowerPoint, a play, a song, or some other way that they design. By doing this activity, multimedia is able to utilize the multiple intelligence that Howard Gardner identified in the 1950’s.

What is the future of Multimedia in education?

Here are some of the articles that i referred,

Introduction

Multimedia Training

Future of multimedia in Education