The right digital tools for the task can help learners be more creative.
You don’t need to be an expert in every digital creation tool – your role is to encourage learners to experiment, before they choose which one to use.
Creative group projects that involve telling a story or explaining a process, open up possibilities for working with a range of software to create multi-media components.
It’s important that learners choose for themselves the type of presentation they want to create, and the kinds of multimedia components it’ll include – text, video, images, and sound.
Help them select the software that’s appropriate for the media they’ve chosen to work with.
Give learners the opportunity to choose from the full range of digital resources available to them.
This includes making the most of the underused features in their go-to presentation software, such as document templates.
Learning is enhanced when learners make a conscious decision to use the tools that best convey their ideas.
So, encouraging them to evaluate their choices throughout the creative process and providing them with regular formative feedback is important.
Some projects can give learners the opportunity to adapt their use of media for different audiences.
They could create two presentations on appropriate online behaviour for a parents' evening, one for their peers and the other for parents.
When assessing their finished work make sure that learners reflect on how digital tools have helped them achieve their aims, and on what they could do differently next time.
In this short film for teachers Jennifer Jones explains how to get students to enhance their presentations by using creative digital tools.
Teacher notes
It is up to the teacher to make students aware of the options available to them, but they then should let the students experiment with these creative tools and make the most of them.
The tools that the students choose to use will help determine what sort of presentation is given.
The multimedia elements in a presentation can include text, video, sound and images. All of these can be enhanced by using the correct digital tools and the correct software. Often overlooked aspects of software should be experimented with, e.g. document templates.
Teachers should encourage students to evaluate their choices while working on a project. At the end of the exercise ask the students to reflect on their work and ascertain if they would do anything differently next time.
More from this series:
Evaluating and improving. video
In this short film for teachers Rhys ap William talks about the importance of evaluation and how students can improve their work if they learn to do it effectively.
Problem solving and modelling. video
In this short film for teachers Jennifer Jones explains decomposition, which is an important part of problem solving for students and a way for them to use key thinking skills.
Data and information literacy. video
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