Commercial Hypermedia Product
Commercial Hypermedia Products are widely used in most classroom environments today. Commercial Hypermedia Products are divided into four different categories: instructional software, interactive or electronic storybooks, reference materials, and collections of development resources.
I am going to dive deeper into the "collections of development resources" category within this post. I believe that many educators use this category in their daily instruction. Collection of development resources is a fancy reference name for clip art, photos, fun fonts, animations, charts, templates, sound clips, etc. These are the enhancers of your technology-based instructional practices. These enhancers can be as simple as a chosen font or PowerPoint template. We, as teachers, are unaware of how often we make adjustments with collections of development resources.
I am including a link to a free font website (http://www.urbanfonts.com/). On this website, you can search for fun, new fonts for your personal use (presentations, newsletters, visual aids, schedules, etc.). The options are endless! You can search for something specific, or you can browse by category (new fonts, top 100, etc.). You can search by font characteristic (dotted, USA, western, adventure). It's always fun to be able to create something of your own that reflects your personality and serves an important purpose in your classroom. Changing something as simple as a font can make your visual presentation of information more appealing to you, parents, and students.
Chosen Multimedia Authoring Tool
A multimedia tool that I am looking forward to using in my own classroom is Virtual Environments! With field trips becoming more scarce, a virtual environment can take students to a new place without them ever leaving the classroom. Students will have the opportunity to experience new places and things from the comfort of their classroom. They will be able to see things that they never dreamed of seeing, while you, the teacher, give them an experience of a lifetime! Not only can you experience field trips that you've never been apart of yourself, but you can also make virtual field trips of your own. This is a great way to give back to other students that may not be able to physically experience something close to your school. So, remember to take lots of pictures and gather information on your own trips, in order to upload them into a virtual field trip of your own later!
Go on a tour of The Great Wall of China here.
