Pictured are screen shots of the beginning slides of a PowerPoint presentation about dinosaurs. Students practice using video and digital cameras to create movies and graphics. The school is fortunate to have access to wonderful digital cameras by Sony, and the students get very excited about learning to use the equipment. They capture graphics from other sources as well and edit or integrate the graphics into their own artwork using Adobe Photoshop or Broderbund's Kid Pix Studio. The students create and scan drawings or paintings for use in their creations.
Students create short video clips of their teams at work.
Once the students are comfortable with the basics of creating a presentation, the library media specialist introduces the research aspect of the project. Merrimack School's fourth and fifth graders follow the steps of the Big Six , a popular information literacy model. The children know they will be using the information they gather to create a multimedia presentation, so they take this phase seriously. The classroom teachers and I collaborate in selecting a list of topics from the Virginia Standards of Learning. Students may choose to research famous Virginians or key figures of the American Revolution.