Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

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Mul ti me dia De sign
In tro duc tion
Welcome to the world of powerful PowerPoint. This book will help you use
PowerPoint in ways you never thought were pos sible, with the ul timate goal of
creating better learning en vironments for your stu dents. What ever you do as an
educator requires some plan ning, whether it takes the form of de tailed lesson
plans or a few notes jot ted on the back of a nap kin. When creating complex
learn ing en vi ron ments, plan ning is very im por tant. This chap ter in tro duces
some of the basics of planning and design to help you create better learning en vi-
ronments. You will be in troduced to the benefits of multimedia, the de sign pro -
cess, benefits of hav ing your students de sign multimedia, and metaphors and
organizations for multimedia projects.
Vo cab u lary
• De cide
• Met a phor
• De sign
• Or ga ni za tion
• De velop
• Story board
• Eval u ate
• Summative eval u a tion
• For ma tive eval u a tion

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What Is Mul ti me dia?
Mul ti me dia
is a term that has been around for a long time. Be fore comput-
ers, it referred to a com bination of slides (from a slide pro jector) and sounds
(usually music from a tape player). It has been around for so long be cause peo ple
have recognized that we can be en gaged through multiple senses. Some peo ple
are pri mar ily vi sual learn ers, au di tory learn ers, or kin es thetic learn ers, but most
of us are a com bination of all three. Us ing dif ferent senses in creases at tention,
motivation, and, in many cases, learning. “The power of multimedia and
hypermedia presentation soft ware co mes with changes in the ways teachers and
learners have access to and dem onstrate their un derstanding of knowledge, mov -
ing from a sin gle dom i nant pre sen ta tion and dem on stra tion style (ver bal/lin guis-
tic, lin ear/se quen tial) to an in te grated, multisensory learn ing and dem on stra tion
‘microworld’ (Papert, 1992), where learners have more freedom of choice in the
mode of learning and the or der in which learning takes place” (Male, 2003, p. 6).
As this quote sug gests, multimedia involves multiple senses and a degree of
learner control and choice.
Robinette suggests, “Multimedia is about combining sights, sounds, and
in ter ac tive el e ments to cre ate an ex pe ri ence un like that which co mes from sim-
ply reading text or idly viewing a video” (1995, p. 10). Goldberg says, “Mul ti -
media, as I use it to de fine the cool new medium that I’ve been go ing on about, is
the com bination of au dio/visual me dia el ements with interactivity. . . . A typ ical
mul ti me dia ti tle might in clude any com bi na tion of text, pic tures, com puter
graphics, an i ma tion, au dio, and video” (1996, p. 14).
Multimedia is about in cluding a va riety of me dia with interactivity. Typ ical
pre sen ta tions (us ing PowerPoint or other pre sen ta tion tools) em pha size the me-
dia and not the interactivity. When enhancing a lecture to present to an au dience,
interactivity is not al ways im portant. How ever, when creating pro jects that your
students can control, picking and choosing where to go within the pro ject,
well-designed interactivity is very important.
In ter ac tive mul ti me dia helps stu dents learn by in creas ing mo ti va tion, by
giving them con trol over their learning, and by reaching them through different
senses. As you design multimedia presentations for your students, you de cide
what me dia are most appropriate. Sometimes a picture is worth a thou sand
words; sometimes a few words are worth a thousand pictures; and sometimes, in
the case of a struggling reader, for example, spoken words are more important
than everything else. A few bells and whistles, used sparingly and appropriately,
can increase mo tivation and hold your stu dents’ at tention, but a carefully de-
signed pro ject with ap pro pri ate me dia el e ments can be a pow er ful ex pe ri ence for
the learner. The key is to design your projects well.
2 Mul ti me dia De sign

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