Byte-Sized -- What Kids Should Know How to Do: Multimedia Basics

Todays' blog post is the next post in a series of posts sharing the TL;DR information available in the Illinois Computer Literacy Knowledge and Skill Development Continuum adopted May 2022. In this  series, it is hoped that you will have a better understanding of what technology skills our students are expected to have at different grade levels. Of course, each student is different -- some will acquire these skills sooner than their peers; some will acquire them later. These are meant to be a guide for teachers. 

Computer literacy isn't just something that is taught in "computer class" by a "computer teacher." Because the use of computing devices impacts our students at school and at home, for school work, for socializing, and for fun or entertainment, computer literacy is something every educator needs to assist students with. It is my hope that by summarizing these skills for you, it will be easier for you to find ways to help students develop, refine, and retain the computer literacy skills they will need and use for the rest of their lives.

You can find the actual continuum here. What you will see in these posts and the linked spreadsheet are my interpretations and summaries.

Multimedia -- audio, video, and images -- are the things kids like to work with the most for any school project. While it's fun, it can also be a bit challenging to work with. In today's post, I will share what kids should be able to do at the basic level of using multimedia. Click here to check out the spreadsheet, specifically the tab that says, "Multimedia Basics."

By the time kids hit 4th grade, they should be able to use devices to capture multimedia, including audio, video, and images. The good news is they can actually do all of those things with their Chromebooks! And honestly, many of them probably know how to do it with their phones and iPads as well. Having kids create audio, video, and images to use in projects or even as alternative assessments (formal or summative), is a great way for them to be more engaged in their learning! Ideas:

• Instead of giving students a quiz on the parts of a cell, have them create an infographic.
• Instead of having students do a math worksheet or problems from the book on paper, have them create a screencast of themselves solving and explaining their solution to the problem.
• For kids who get really nervous presenting live in front of an audience, give them the opportunity to do one of their presentations on video.
• Instead of doing a Google image search for school projects, challenge students to take their own photographs and use those instead.

By the time kids hit 7th grade, they should be able to use multimedia editing tools to do things like add filters, crop, splice, and add effects to multimedia. There are so many multimedia editing tools out there, and they're not all easy to use, so it's okay to start simple and use tools they already know -- think about the cropping and filters available with the camera app on every phone or on the iPads. Kids could even insert images into Google Drawings and edit the images there. How soon should kids start trying out multimedia editing tools? According to Illinois, in kindergarten. This should be a beginning skill until grade 3, then it should be a developing skill in grades 4 - 6. STEM class and art class are great paces for kids to start this!

Finally, kids in grades 8 and up should know what the different types of multimedia file formats are. They should start becoming familiar with this starting in grade 4. The only real way to do this is to work with the different types of multimedia and point out the file extension (that's the letters and maybe even numbers after the dot in a file name). Want to try your own hand at identifying file types? Click here and follow these directions:

1.) Drag the terms AUDIO, VIDEO, and IMAGE to the top of each column.

2.) Drag the file type under its correct heading.

3.) Take a screenshot of your answer and email it to me.

4.) Everyone who participates gets a small prize.

5.) The person in each building with the highest score will get an additional prize! If there's a tie, the names will go in a drawing for one winner.

Is your head swimming? If so, don't worry! I can help you find ways to incorporate using multimedia in your current lessons, and I can even develop some lessons about using and creating multimedia for kids. 

Are you already having kids use multimedia in their school work? I would love to hear about it, and I am sure other teachers would love to learn from YOU! Please share in the comments on this post how you're incorporating multimedia!