My name is Carol Glaser, and I’m a Flagler College Elementary Education Major.  I’m going to share a little about a MediaWorks project I created with a partner in my Instructional Design class taught by Dr. Kathleen Eide.

One of the objectives of our project was to focus on a topic covered under the Florida Sunshine State standards for a certain grade level.  My partner and I chose to focus on westward expansion during the 1800s for the fifth grade.  We narrowed our topic to cover information about the three main trails used during the westward pioneer emigration.

MediaWorks includes a range of programs that allow users to be very creative.  As we brainstormed about our topic, we knew that our scenes needed to draw students into the mood of the old West and wagon train traveling.  We accomplished this through our opening scenes by using background photos set against a purple-blue backdrop reminiscent of a western sky at dusk.  Our opening highlight was our music, which starts our journey West, over rough terrain and wide rivers, singing about “one more river to cross.”  We imported the sound clip into our program and carefully placed it exactly where we wanted it to start and stop using MediaWorks’ sequencer.  We also included an animated wagon and team, created through MediaWorks’ Animator.  Other fun additions we used for many pages of our program were text transitions, linking buttons, and voice-overs.

We were particularly proud of our menu page, which requires students to interact with the program by choosing from several topics that will take them to new pages and information via linking buttons.  Students can easily return to this menu from most pages they go to.  The possibilities for multimedia projects using MediaWorks are endless.  Projects can range from simple to vastly complex.  Our project included links to websites featuring Native American tribes, embedded videos from Discovery Education, and links to Microsoft Word and Excel documents.

You might be wondering how we created some of the artwork for our program, such as the wagon wheel border and the signposts on the main menu page.  MediaWorks includes a paint program where you can create not only artwork but also color-graded backgrounds.  If you prefer and have access to, you can use Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator to create artwork to import into your program, which is how the above mentioned artwork was done.  One other important feature, particularly for teachers, is the ability to create multiple-choice quizzes and linking the answer choices to a pop-up object, phrase, or sound to indicate whether it is correct or not. 

There are many ways teachers can incorporate MediaWorks programs into the curriculum.  One way I could use it in my classroom is as a center activity to extend the learning experience of the classroom instruction about United States history during the 1800s.  Another way to use it is as a jumping point for group projects, such as Native American tribes from our program.  Students can view the information about the Native American tribes included on the program, and then choose a new tribe to present similar information to the class using pictures, artifacts, and written (or computer-generated) material.  The MediaWorks program is especially great to use for ESOL or ESE students working with a buddy to increase their understanding of the material taught in class.  Most students love to use interactive computer programs.  Being able to create such programs through MediaWorks targeting curriculum topics is a great benefit for teachers and provides another awesome tool to place in our arsenal.