Multi-Media in the Classroom

Why I Love Online Learning and Teaching

Executive Summary about Multimedia teacher by Kay Wais
I have spent over 4,000 hours in online classrooms as both a student and a teacher – long enough to have established an opinion on the topic of online versus traditional classes. I am not with the majority when I say I overwhelmingly prefer the online environment to the physical classroom environment for project management learning. 1. Impartiality
2. The Internet is the work field for Project Management
Learning project management online helps us practice in the same virtual environment where many project managers will be working. Most professional project managers today are working with multiple virtual team members and vendors. In today’s business world, some project managers rarely meet their project stakeholders, communicating primarily through posting project reports and information to project portals and tracking systems. Therefore it is important to feel comfortable communicating and working online. What could be a better simulation of this than online courses?
Memories of speeding to campus to make it on time, struggling to find a parking spot, plugging the parking meter, and running up steps to get to class is a big part of my student life memory.
4. Students tend to learn best when they are relaxed and comfortable.
Sitting at home with bunny slippers up on the desk, sipping a cup of tea and working online at a time of convenience is absolutely the best learning environment. Critics will retort that there are too many distractions at home.

5. Geographic and organizational diversity of students
There are a few tends in the types of students who choose online.
Physically disabled people. All in all, the online classroom provides a wider pool of teachers and students, which greatly adds to the richness of the group discussions.
6. Skip the busy work
The online environment does not tempt instructors to “fill up” class time with low-value activities. When teaching and learning online the courses tend to be structured to jump into the topic, work with it to help ensure learning, and then move on when the student has individually mastered it.
7. Deadline orientation The physical classroom tends to treat learning as a timed meeting.
Different students work at different paces. Some people are new to the material and need more time, others might be slower readers or workers, and it can be very difficult to accurately estimate the time it takes a students to do an exercise. Classroom time is often structured for exercises to be lecture breaks for the instructor. The online environment is structured around milestones and deadlines, the way real work projects are. There is no wasting of time. Students learn to complete assignment deadlines rather than to just show up.
8. Safety
Many adult learners attend evening classes that often conclude around 10:00 pm. After class there is the long, dark walk to the car. There are personal safety and public safety issues involved with this scenario that are completely eliminated in the online environment.
Online courses provide students with the opportunity to “see” the reality of the course much earlier than the traditional classroom setting. The online course is an open book to students.

Multi-Media in the Classroom

Executive Summary about Multimedia teacher by Michael Hines
It can lead to more collaborative learning experiences while allowing students to learn with multi-media or from multi-media.
Once the student forms a mental image, then the concept is ‘understood’. Visual Learning and multi-media lessons can be very time consuming with regards to teacher preparation.