World of Multimedia
Profiles in Success: Ringwood North Primary School
Melbourne, Australia: When teachers and Year 6 students at Melbourne’s Ringwood North Primary School set out to create an original music CD in 2004, they had little idea that they were setting the stage for what was to become a much broader venture into the world of multimedia in education.
According to Leading Teacher Adam Brice, one of the project’s underlying goals was to use Apple Macs and iLife software to establish a collaborative creative environment in which all Year 6 students played an important role. He explains: “We had students working on every aspect of the CD’s production – creating the lyrics and music, recording and editing the tracks with GarageBand, sourcing the best prices on CDs, creating the music CD within iTunes…absolutely everything.”
The result of the project was Skoolz Out!, a CD containing a range of original songs, including titles such as Superflea, Lend a Hand and Why do People Cry? But this was only one of the results; and Ringwood North teachers and students have since demonstrated how, using the Mac and the Apple iLife suits, multimedia projects can deliver very real educational outcomes.
Focus on the outcomes
At the heart of the school’s Apple strategy is the desire to exploit the creativity of each student in such a way as to enhance the learning process. According to Brice, presenting students with challenges best described as enjoyable is crucial. “When you throw a challenge at a student and there’s a creative output, inevitably they come through with flying colours,” he says.
There is a definite caveat, though, which is that the technology used by students and teachers must encourage a focus on the output rather than the technology itself. Put somewhat bluntly, the hardware and software need to be transparent; and according to Brice, this is precisely one of the main reasons behind the school’s ongoing Apple preference.
Over the years we’ve found that the combination of Mac computers and software, such as the iLife suite, give students the ability to concentrate on the project without the constant distraction of learning how to use the hardware and software. For example, you shouldn’t have to study HTML in order to make a Web page. And there should be no requirement to understand the intricacies of page layout to create an effective brochure. With our Apple environment, those and many other needs are totally done away with; and I’m saying that as a teacher who, up until coming to this school, was a confirmed PC advocate
— Adam Brice, Leading Teacher
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