Multimedia Presentations

A Multimedia Presentation based on 'The Liverpool Robotic Telescope'

In this activity children create a multimedia presentation about the Liverpool Robotic Telescope using text, images and sounds. They will create links between pages and show sensitivity to the needs of their audience.

The presentation will be a reference resource.

Age group: 10 - 11 years

QCA Scheme of Work - Unit 6A, Multimedia presentation.

The Short Focused Tasks contained within Unit 6A should have already been taught before beginning this activity. This activity also develops skills in writing for different audiences.

PowerPoint, Illuminatus Opus, MP Express plus others

Learning Objectives

• To learn that ICT can be used to present information to a specific audience in an exciting way using images, sounds and text.
• To learn that children can plan and produce a multimedia presentation including the links between the pages and the images, sounds and text that they need.

Duration

This activity would need several sessions of work, both in the planning stage without the computer and on the computer. It is probably an activity that would take a term of ICT work.

The activity

The first step in creating a multimedia presentation is for the children to understand what a multimedia presentation is, how it works and ways to achieve the effects they want.

The best way to do this is for them to look at a wide range of reading material, both fiction and non-fiction and see how the authors have used text, images, links and sounds. They can discuss the layout of the pages; how users navigate through the pages and how the pictures give information or complement the text etc. They can also look at online websites to get ideas.

The children then need to plan what their 'Multimedia Presentation' will be like:

• Will it be a reference guide about the Liverpool Telescope?
• How many pages will they make and how will they link them together?
• What areas will they look at?
• What pictures and sounds would they use?

It helps to plan by using a piece of paper for each page of the presentation and then drawing the buttons for where the links will be. They could draw a flow chart showing how the pages will link together.

Once they have planned the structure of their presentation, they can design it on screen.

The multimedia software can use clip art and sounds available from any clipart/sound packages. There are many other resources linked to a wide range of topics to be found there. Alternatively, children can draw images using Paint Shop Pro, MS Paint, or scan pictures they have drawn into Paint Shop Pro (and edit them if they want to). They can also record their own sounds using the microphone!

Multimedia presentations can be as simple or as complicated as the children are skilled and inspired enough to achieve. Much multimedia authoring is now done as web pages so that a wider audience can be reached and children could use one of the many web-authoring tools and use their multimedia skills to publish to the web.

When the telescopes are up and running, children will be able to request an image. That image can be analysed within the classroom using LTImage (software is provided by the Schools' Observatory after registration). The findings from the investigation can be included within the presentation.

A multimedia presentation can be produced about anything and for any audience. It could be a multimedia Topic Glossary for a class of 10-year-olds or a multimedia version of a popular story made for the infants. Older children could work with the younger children to make their artwork and words into a multimedia storybook.