Week Five: Media and Information Literacy

Educational technology incorporates all those tools used to educate in the classroom, workplace, or home environment. Designing these technologies and using them for instructional media can sometimes be a hassle. When designing or using a webpage, presentation, or visual aid of any kind, keeping the intended audience in mind is incredibly important. The colors, pictures, sounds, and extras (links to other sites or resources) must all be environmentally and age-appropriate.

Some of the first aspects to consider when designing your own instructional media are Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity: CRAP. Especially in elementary education, sticking to these guidelines is very important:

1. Contrast refers to the use of colors on a slide or page. Using a plain white background is typically a good idea; however, using bright yellow words can make reading and learning difficult for students.
2. Repetition is not always key, nor is it necessary. Keep your audience's interest piqued by changing wording every now and then.
3. Alignment: while centering all the text in a presentatin may give the look of order, readers generally have a hard time following along, and miss/ignore important components of the presentation.
4. Proximity refers to how close different parts of each page or slide are in reference to one another. If part of your sentence is at the top of the slide and the second line is at the bottom, readers will likely be confused or unimpressed (depends on the age).

Also to be considered when designing instructional media: multimedia and hypermedia. Multimedia is any program that combines still pictures, moving pictures, sound, animation, or video. Hypermedia is any program that connects media by links, allowing a person to explore a document or webpage in an unguided fashion. Both of these supplements draw the audience into the presentation and can promote further learning.

In elementary education, knowing how to reach the students in an interesting way is crucial. Finding media that not only entertains but also facilitates learning can be tough. Looking into my own past, I remember watching this show:

Although incredibly silly, the children's show Zoom incorporated all of the aforementioned elements. Using basic colors, somewhat catchy tunes, and big bold letters, Zoom is able to keep children interested in the educational aspects of the show while entertaining its intended audience. Other shows, such as The Magic School Bus and Bill Nye the Science Guy, are excellent sources of inspiration for designing instructional media for children.

Keep these guidelines close at hand when you start designing your own instructional media. They can be altered and improved upon for any audience. Just remember to keep it sweet and the to point, with as few distractions as possible.