Maps, Timelines, & Surveys: Incorporating Interactive Elements into Content
S. Mark Davidson
Springfield High School
Holland, Ohio
Title: Maps, Timelines, and Surveys: Incorporating Interactive Elements into Content
Overview and Rationale:
Engagement and interaction is critical to building an audience. Equally important is providing meaningful content that is easily understood. This lesson will introduce various multimedia vehicles that allow content to be interactive, engaging and digestible.
Goals for Understanding
At the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
• describe why the need for audience interaction is critical for a multimedia site.
• identify when complex text needs to be simplified.
• choose appropriate methods for incorporating multimedia to enhance and simplify text.
• create multimedia vehicles to incorporate into text.
Essential Questions:
• How can multimedia create dialogue with the reader?
• Why is dialogue with the reader valuable?
• How can multimedia be used to simplify a complex topic?
• How can the addition of multimedia elements enhance the ability to best tell a story?
Overviews and Timeline:
Day 1 (One 54-minute class)
Introduction Activity: Students will look at examples of various web stories: some that only use text to tell a story and others that incorporate a wider range of storytelling techniques. Students will participate in a whole-group discussion on what stories they are likely to read and why. This will lead into discussion on the importance of engagement. Students will brainstorm a list of ways media incorporate interaction with the audience in order to better engage it.
Modeled Activity: Teacher will use existing content (the model editorial on graduation requirements) and demonstrate how to make text more interactive.
Individual Activity: Students will watch Camtasia tutorial on creating a poll.
Homework: Students will practice creating a poll to incorporate into their own previously written editorials.
Day 2 (One 54-minute class)
Introduction Activity: Students will share the polls they created with the class.
Whole-group Activity: Students will read Multimedia Journalism pages 48-49 on making text scannable and discuss why journalists write in a short and concise manner. Teacher will pose to the class: What can be done to make a complex topic more easily understood? Discussion on infographics will follow.
Individual Activity: Students will take notes on infographics using Multimedia Journalism pages 456-465.
Homework: Students will use the link https://storify.com/toledophotog/infographics to find three effective examples of how infographics help readers understand information to share with the class.
Day 3 (One 54-minute class)
Whole-group Activity: Students will share and discuss examples of infographics. From here, the teacher will transition to discussion on how multimedia vehicles allow information to be gathered from readers in the form of surveys.
Individual Activity: Students will watch Camtasia tutorial on creating a survey.
Homework: Students will create an original survey to help gather information that could be used in the planning, researching, and execution of a future story. These will be submitted to Mr. Davidson for review and publication. Edits may be necessary.
Note: This homework activity must be published previous to a homeroom period and coordinated with the homeroom lesson plan. During homeroom, all students not receiving intervention will have the opportunity to complete the survey of their choice. This will provide COMM students will data for the assessment.
Day 4 (Two 54-minute classes)
Assessment: Students will create one infographic (map, timeline, etc.) to visually demonstrate the data collected from their surveys. Students will have one day to plan the type of graphic they will create and begin executing it and one day to finish the graphic and write a short reflective piece.
Questions for reflection:
• How successful was your survey at collecting information? Explain your reasoning for making this determination.
• Why did you choose this particular type of infographic? Why was it the best way to communicate your story?
• Why are infographics important to storytelling?
References:
Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide by Andy Bull
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