Multimedia - Stop Motion

Changes: Increased explanation of how Stopmotion is used to foster creativity and fixed up grammar mistakes

CC BY 2.0 JEREMY SEGAL

Have you ever wanted to be a multimedia movie director? The multimedia effect combines multiple stimuli, including video, audio and text, to demonstrate information, significantly increasing the retention of information for students and teachers.

A model explaining how students display information through multimedia (Hu et al., 2021)

Through Stop-motion, multimedia and higher-order thinking strategies, students can demonstrate their prior and current learning through problem-solving. This is done through students creating an external representation to solve an inquiry without writing dreaded paragraphs (Vagg et al., 2020) Furthermore, students utilising multimedia encourage critical thinking and evaluation of how their message can be communicated using various stimuli (Mayer, 2018).

This is seen through the downloadable app Stop Motion, a free application that all students can use to create simple yet effective videos, all by pressing a button while adding background music, voiceovers and text to add a level of depth while explaining concepts.

For example, due to the simplicity of this app, I have created a Stop Motion to demonstrate the stage 1 PDHPE outcome ACPMP030 of how to be sun-safe through utilising video, voiceover and text (NSW Education Standards Authority, 2018). CC BY 2.0 JEREMY SEGAL Fostering Creativity

Stop Motion can significantly enhance students' creativity by showcasing conceptual understanding through cinematography methods. As students problem-solve how to convey ideas into stop motion, they can utilise techniques including string, camera angles and video effects to portray their outcome. Furthermore, students can utilise the Stop Motion effect to make their frames faster or slower, depending on how quickly they take photos to control objects.

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Pedagogy - Cognitivism and Constructivism

As students construct videos, higher-order thinking strategies are utilised to assist the cognitive processing of the content, demonstrating solidified knowledge. Cognitivism and constructivism can solidify knowledge into long-term memory by evaluating and creating videos while demonstrating consolidated knowledge through more conventional methods. Students can use Stop Motion to control inanimate objects as if they were alive to explain a concept, enhancing engagement and understanding (Bower, 2017).

For example, students can utilise the Geography syllabus with Stop Motion to display understanding about their favourite animal (ACHGK021) (NSW Education Standards Authority, 2015).

Limitations CC BY 2.0 JEREMY SEGAL

However, the accessible version of Stop-Motion limits users from fully utilising the creative and multimedia potential by limiting foreground, background, and drawing elements that the user must manually apply.

References Bower, M. (2017). Design of Technology-Enhanced Learning (2nd ed., Vol. 1). Emerald Group Publishing. Hu, L., Chen, G., Li, P., & Huang, J. (2021). Multimedia effect in problem-solving: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 33(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09610-z Mayer, R. E. (2018). Designing multimedia instruction in anatomy: An evidence-based approach. Clinical Anatomy, 43(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/ca.23265 NSW Education Standards Authority. (2015). Geography K–10 NSW education standards. Nsw.edu.au. https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/hsie/geography-k-10 NSW Education Standards Authority. (2018). NSW syllabus for the Australian curriculum personal development, health and physical education K-10 Syllabus (p. 53). https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/wcm/connect/2f657694-dc52-48ba-a440-9256e92c00e3/pdhpe-k-10-syllabus-2018-pdf.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID= Vagg, T., Balta, J. Y., Bolger, A., & Lone, M. (2020). Multimedia in education: What do the students think? Health Professions Education, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hpe.2020.04.011