A Multimedia, Inter-Disciplinary Lesson
Teacher: Jerry Lachance
School: Colorado's Finest
Alternative High School
Hardware and Software: 25
Macintosh Power PC 5260 Computers, HyperStudio, and ClarisWorks software
Grade: Ninth through Twelfth
The goal of this lesson is to demonstrate how a National
Geographic research project, taught in a high school social studies
class, can be transformed into an exciting multi-media presentation. The
lesson will introduce students to HyperStudio, demonstrate how a
stack is developed and show several examples of student stacks.
A unit, entitled National Geographic Research, has been
taught in my school for several years, mostly by traditional methods. Using
National Geographic magazines, the students research a topic, cut
out pictures, design poster boards, and present the information to the
class.
In cooperation with the social studies teacher, I have
developed an interdisciplinary lesson integrating the National Geographic
course with a multi-media unit that I teach. The students spend time in
the social studies class researching a specific topic from a National
Geographic magazine. Then, in the computer lab, they learn how to use
HyperStudio. A storyboard is then developed showing how the material
will be presented. Their completed stacks include scanned photographs,
text, hyper-links, animation, QuickTime movies and sound bites.
At the end of the unit, the students showcase their National Geographic
presentations on a large screen TV to the entire class.
What was previously a one dimensional poster board presentation
is now an exciting multimedia event that kids are really excited about.
The project is stored permanently on the computers, saved on their disks
and taken home on a videotape for parents. We also plan to share the projects
on the World Wide Web.
The social studies teacher has now made technology an
integral part of his curriculum, students are relating to technology in
a more meaningful way, and the project has sparked other teacher's desire
to use technology in their curriculum.
Lesson Plan Disclaimer
