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Letting Go: Creating Rich-Media Presentations in the Student-Centered Classroom
by Susan O`Connor

 Last year I began my third decade as a journalism teacher and student publications adviser with a firm resolve to strive for a more student-centered classroom and to integrate new technologies into my classroom instruction and yearbook production workflow. I was convinced that my students—who introduced me to both Facebook and instant messaging—would quickly embrace the technologies that so excited me over the summer— blogs, wikis, podcasts, videoconferencing, and rich-media presentations. I was excited by the possibilities. I saw opportunities for my students to participate and interact. I envisioned my students collaborating, creating and communicating.

Was I successful in my quest for a classroom where students create, communicate and collaborate 24/7? In many ways, yes. There was also the expected frustration, as students—and their teacher—came to terms with technology that often is accompanied by the additional “opportunity” for problem solving, and the shift in responsibility for learning.

One of the technologies that I was anxious to implement in my classroom was Adobe Presenter.  I was interested in Presenter because the application can be accessed from within Microsoft PowerPoint. Most of my students had become comfortable with PowerPoint while still in elementary school, but, unfortunately, most of their presentations consisted of copied pages of images and text from electronic and print resources. Adobe Presenter offered the opportunity to transform their presentations with audio, quizzes, flash files, and attachments, all without leaving PowerPoint.

As a class, we decided that creating a type of interactive “staff manual” detailing the basics of yearbook production was a worthy undertaking. Since producing a quality yearbook required a staff that could collaborate well, I decided to ask my students to collaborate to produce their own instructional materials, with experienced staff members as team leaders. We decided to focus the teams on various aspects of production: understanding terminology, basic design, photography, business, etc. Each group produced a storyboard, decided on slide content, wrote an audio script, produced handouts and wrote quiz questions. Some Flash “how-to’s” were created using free screen capture software like CamStudio, Wink and Jing which are readily available on the Internet. Each of the programs has its quirks, and not all are available for all operating systems, but they do produce acceptable swf files.

Assembling the content was straightforward. The most difficult task for the students was achieving a smooth delivery for the audio portion. The students found speaking into the microphone a more difficult task than giving a live presentation. Producing the quiz questions and answers was simple, although for optimum design the students were required to move the elements around the page manually—an equally simple drag and drop procedure.

When the students were finished, they were ready to publish. Students chose the optional Autorun for CD. When it was opened, the presentation automatically began running. The students burned the presentation to CDs and distributed the CDs to their classmates. Students could review each other’s materials and reinforce their learning by taking the interactive quizzes at the end of each presentation.

What did the students gain from using a rich-media authoring tool to produce their own instructional materials? They learned to organize and manage a project. They honed their creative skills. They learned to work collaboratively. They learned problem-solving skills.  Most importantly, they learned to take responsibility for their own learning and to rely on their teacher not as a sage on the stage, but a guide on the side.