It was time for my juniors to create a multimedia presentation for any subject area teacher of their choosing. This assignment required a meeting with that teacher to discuss what he/she might want to have as a useful product in class for the next semester. Once the subject was chosen, the students then needed to decide on the method of presentation: Powerpoint, Ezedia, iPhoto, Keynote or iMovie were the software programs they had available. Some chose a program that helped them create html.

The next part was to draft a story board of the project (using Inspiration or Timeliner) and then begin to assemble to components, the photos, the soundtracks and the video. In many cases, the soundtracks and the digital movies had to be made by the student, and often photos had to be digitized (scanned) to be available to the presentation program of choice. This was a huge undertaking for most students, and their process needed careful, daily checking on my part to help keep them on task.

Once the project was assembled and ready to be burned to a DVD or CD, the students’ next requirement was to design and print two labels for each of two discs, one for me and one for the subject area teacher.

Progress emails from the class to the FirstClass conferences I set up for this project kept us all informed of how each was doing.

Throughout this project, I could see that my students were learning not only the presentation software but also a lot of other software needed to prepare items for the CD. For example, students had to master Photoshop layers to produce text superimposed on collages of their photos before uploading these to a web page or adding the product to the label or to the project welcome screen.

All of my students were able to produce a useful product for a teacher of another subject. Not only did this show me that they were engaged throughout their work it also gave them some self esteem as students taught their teachers something about technology as they gave them their CD’s.  I still have some copies that I can share with you.