CHAPTER FIVE

PRINCIPLES FOR SELECTING MULTIMEDIA RESOURCES

Introduction

While there is little doubt that media can enhance teachers’ instruction of pupils, media by themselves cannot guarantee effective instruction. Teachers can effectively employ them by incorporating media into the social studies they teach and learn.

Principles/Recommendations for Audio-Visual Use in Social Studies

To successfully include audio-visual materials into teaching social studies, the following recommendations or principles can be used. (Michealis, 1975; Blythe- lord, 1991; Farrant, 1981)

  1. A teacher should view the entire learning environment of the classroom as a laboratory for students’ learning and the application of his or her knowledge in real-world situations. Therefore, in a self-contained classroom, the choice of instructional materials, the organization and rearrangement of the learning environment and the use of materials and equipment to facilitate learning is fundamental.

  2. The entire neighbourhood of the school and community resources should be viewed and utilized as a laboratory for student learning.

  3. To achieve particular educational objectives, media should be planned, produced, chosen, or used as resources. That is, the use of media should be dictated by objectives.

  4. For educational purposes, media should be chosen based on precise criteria that are closely tied to instructional planning. These include I the audience’s makeup in terms of age, sex, and the learners’ social, cultural, environmental, and economic backgrounds. entry level, motivation, physical prowess or limitations of learners, and goals to be attained (whether cognitive, emotive, or psychomotor). (vi) The subject matter’s nature (vii) the media’s physical characteristics, such as its traits, authenticity, and relevance (viii); the media’s price; and (ix) the expected function of students as well as (x) the mod e of instructions amongst others.

  5. A teacher should announce the concreteness or abstractness of the experiences the media will provide before using them. Teachers need to be adaptable to the changing environment in the classroom and have different media to accommodate students’ individual learning styles.

  6. A range of teaching methodologies should include multimedia materials in their lessons. Multimedia usage should be taken into consideration. This is due to the possibility that a single medium may not be sufficient to fulfil all of the lesson’s stated objectives.

  7. Students’ input should be required when using media. Therefore, when creating any type of media, the teacher should incorporate elements into the curriculum that will guarantee learners’ engagement through discussions, projects, dramatization, and other means.

  8. Questionnaires and individual projects, as well as observation, can be used to evaluate media use. The evaluation’s findings can be used to enhance the use of media in following lessons.

Criterion for Selection and Use of Multimedia in Social Studies

The vital criterion for the selection and utilisation of audio-visual media material is the accessibility of the necessary supplies. In other words, before the teacher chooses the resources to utilize, he or she must make sure that they are both accessible and available to him or her and that he or she has the necessary skills for improvising the materials. The materials might be improvised if the necessity arises. Even when it has been theoretically shown that some audio-visual elements are helpful for teaching a certain topic, the Social Studies teacher does not choose to employ them simply because they are not physically available. Instead, before choosing to employ the resources, it should be determined whether they are available. Therefore, accessibility connotes that the tools that will be utilized has be visibly available as well as made so that both students and teachers can access them as and when necessary.

Second, the prospect of having enough for everyone in the class to participate fairly in class activities should be taken into account. Additionally, some materials can need additional special equipment before they can be utilized, for instance a socket, recorder, electricity and adaptor. Therefore, prior to choosing any materials, the instructor should make sure that everything needed for their use is accessible to both him and the students. Is the required instructional audio-visual content available and accessible to the teachers and students? is the question that arises for this criterion.

The educational media that is chosen must be pertinent to both the goals and the intended audience, or the intended users of the resources are students. This is crucial due to the fact that the goals that the materials are intended to accomplish should align with those of the instructor as well as the students. Being relevant to the student indicates that the instructor should choose resources that are appropriate for their requirements while also keeping in mind the learner’s qualities, for instance degree of achievement, or maturation, age, aptitude, ability. When resources are pertinent to the learners, interest and aspirations help to create simple yet effective teaching and learning activities. The following could be the question form for this criterion: What are the educational and audio-visual instructional media objectives that are intended to be accomplished using the materials. Although the curriculum may be the same across communities, resource materials that have been proven beneficial in one cultural context may not be appropriate and effective in another. Therefore, rather than choosing materials because they have been utilized and proven useful in other contexts, the teacher should make an effort to choose relevant materials from the community for teaching its learners. This is particularly crucial for social studies education and learning, among other topics. Any materials chosen for use must be suitable for both the learners and the objectives. How helpful are the audio-visual resources in relation to the goals of social studies education and instruction as well as learner characteristics? is the question-form of the criterion.

For their selection and usage, learning materials’ physical characteristics are crucial considerations. Here, “physical features” refers to the materials’ appearance, toughness, size, and clarity. The correctness, clarity, as well as utility of the pictures, paintings and drawings, as well as the density of the resources for simple packaging and safe-keeping are also taken into consideration when determining quality. Before making a choice, all of these aspects should be taken into account. Due to the nation’s current economic downturn, efforts should be made to save money by investing in products that are high quality and hence durable. What physical characteristics do the teaching resources have? is the query under quality. The teacher should be frugal while choosing teaching resources in several third world nations that are going through an depression economically. Although the audio-visual resources should be inexpensive, this does not mean that they should be of lower quality. However, such a document should be purchased and stored correctly if its use is required and the achievement of a curriculum objective would be at risk without it. The cost in terms of the users’ time and effort spent is another factor under this criterion. Therefore, the question to be posed is: How much would using the instructional materials cost in terms of money, time, and energy?

Review Questions

Attempt the following questions:

  1. Highlight the criterion for the selection of multimedia of multimedia resources to suit social studies curriculum contents and objectives.

  2. Identify and discuss the guidelines or principles that can be followed to guarantee efficient incorporation of audio-visual material in the passing of knowledge of Social Studies as stipulated by (Michealis, 1975; Farrant, 1981 and Blythe-lord, 1991).