New technologies have broadened and expanded the role that speaking and listening play in acquiring and sharing knowledge and have tightened their link to other forms of communication. Digital texts confront students with the potential for continually updated content and dynamically changing combinations of words, graphics, images, hyperlinks, and embedded video and audio.--Common Core State Standards Initiative
Goal: create a media lab to give students practice and experience toward goals including:
- Mastering the CCSS related to media, including:
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.2: Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) in order to make informed decisions and solve problems, evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source and noting any discrepancies among the data.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.5: Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.
- Improving students' ability to learn new technology by practicing the act of learning new technology itself
- Engaging students in the authentic creation of quality content for peers, faculty, family, the community, and the world at large
- Query: Should it be a media lab or a maker space, where students can not only make content, but write code and design things as well? In this case, it may be viable to invest in more powerful technology that would create synergies for the creation of code and a variety of tangible and intangible products. (See School and Tech From the Perspective of a High School Student.)
Steps toward creation and use of a media lab (or maker space)
- Designation of appropriate workspace ✓
- Conceptual workspace design
- Equipment (see notes below on hardware and software)
- Furniture
- Hardware acquisition
- Software acquisition
- Student training
- Lesson creation
✓ Space: the storage room in Room 1 has been identified as a potential lab site
[Insert link to workspace design here]
Hardware
- Given the one-to-one Chromebook program, an ideal solution would integrate the use of Chromebooks into the media lab
- Initial testing indicates that cloud-based software may be viable, but challenges with hardware remain (for example, a studio quality microphone has not yet been shown to work with a Chromebook)
- But see http://ehomerecordingstudio.com/cheapest-recording-studio/
- Additional bandwidth may be required for cloud-based solutions
Software
The primary tool identified for use in the lab so far is a product called Soundtrap -- a free cloud-based service that allows for the creation and editing of voice and music tracks
Training
Before committing to Sondtrap, an assignment to students to create accounts on the service and test its ease-of-use with Chromebooks is suggested
Lessons
Test lessons might include assignments to record the reading of texts at students' readily achievable challenge level; to read essays out loud for purposes of revision, editing, and collaboration; to create audio announcements for school events (Leadership);...