M3 Blog Multimedia for Multimodal Learners

This has been a very busy and educational week in both my life and my course assignments. Due to the fact that I am working toward merging the “lateral” J learning taking place on a personal level with the emerging technology tools that we are practicing – it only made sense for me to create a video of the 30’ yurt that my family set up with the help of friends. In creating a farm, and the web-based networking and marketing that needs to be set up along with it, I felt it was important to include my story. The story of what is happening right now in my life, along with the goals that I have for future farm related business ventures and sustainable agriculture community projects.

My audience of self-motivated elearners and fellow farmers can benefit as much as any other group of learners – especially with the accessibility and use of multimedia instructional presentations and videos. Building and farming are two very kinesthetic, hands-on activities (no matter what the specific project or topic). In terms of building a yurt, images, video and personal blogs proved to be more informative than the actual written instruction manual I received from the company that constructed the yurt frame and shell material. Diagrams and photos of actual steps of construction, particularly the finer details, should be made available to their customers. In the very simplistic video I was able to create with Windows Movie Maker, I documented the process of the building project, but do need to add an audio voice over along with text within the still images. In this regard, I am the first to admit that my video was too “cute” and not nearly educational enough – it was more of a documentary than an instructional video.

Using multimedia to engage learners speaks to the multiple intelligences and different learning styles of each individual. I am very impressed with the professionalism and creativity of my classmates’ videos. I am still going through them all, but it is clear that video can be effectively used for any number of topics or subject matter to engage learners and help them understand the material by using a multimodal approach to teaching with multimedia tools.