Multimedia Product Critique #1: Ford

Overview of the Product

I teach an inclusion first grade class. The class is made up of eighteen students (ten general
education students and eight students with an identified learning disabilities or delay). We teach
English Language Arts using the Balanced Literacy format of 120 minutes of ELA and shared
reading is within that time block. Before we begin shared reading, we typically start with a
poem and tie in the video at a later time during the week (usually on Thursday and Friday).
Since Valentines Day is coming up, I choose to critique the Valentine poem video that we use as
our familiar read around this time. The poem and video is titled Five Little Hearts. It is very
simple and easy for students to remember. The video that goes along with the poem is on
YouTube. It is visually bright with the graphics, has music, has narration, and has text that
coincides with the poem the students have been learning. The video can be found at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5noNWgcAAE.
Multimedia Principles and Learning Theories
This video is a combination of narration and animation. The purpose of the video is to provide
students with a visual representation to go along with the poem they are learning. The creator
uses audio to tell the lyrics of the poem while music is playing in the background. Animation is
used to correlate to the poems lyrics. The video does not meet the necessary criteria to say that
it causes essential overload per say. Essential overload is defined as when the amount of
essential information required to understand the multimedia instructional message exceeds the
learners cognitive capacity (Mayer, 2014, pg. 316).
The video is 1:12 minutes long which does not require an extend amount of attention from
students since at this time their attention span is limited. In regards to schema, there is little
requirement on the students part as this is a way to expose students to new reading formats. We
are using them to build their schema for the next grade. Students have been exposed to poems
and the corresponding videos of these styles from the beginning of the year. The purpose of the
poem is to assist students in learning new words, identifying a different genre in regards to
reading (poetry), and recalling rhyming words when presented in the poem that they have just
learned with the poem.
This is not new material for students, so I do not feel it violates the segmenting principle (Mayer,
2014, pg. 319). When the poem is introduced (Monday through Wednesday), we slow it down
and rehearse it to ensure students have a solid foundation with the poem before introducing the
video. Another aspect to take into account is we usually spend a full week and a half learning the
poem before introducing the video. The video is also played multiple times, so students have the
opportunity to adjust to the differences between the spoken poem and the video format since
there are differences in tempo. The pre-training principle really occurs prior to the video for first
grade rather than during the video as they are just beginning to use computers and programs
(Mayer, 2014, pg. 322). This is where we do the above stated activities to rehearse and introduce
concepts, new material, or programs before letting them have access to the material online. The
modality principle does apply here as a concern for some of my students (Mayer, 2014, pg. 317).
The video uses narration with text along with animation and music. My high-level students do
Multimedia Product Critique #1: Ford

fine with having the text on the screen with the audio because they already know the words and
can just sing along or read along anyway from memory. However; my low-level students
struggle with trying to decide rather to focus on the text on the screen or listening to the audio.
This causes them to become distracted which defeats the purpose of using the video to reinforce
the poem.
Re-Design
There are many aspects of this design that I would not change because they are aligned to fit the
various principles described above. However; there are some aspects that I would change to
ensure that it meets the needs of all students and not just those of high-level learners. I would
not change the visual features of color design and overall graphic design. The colors contrast
well and the graphics correlate to the poem. I would remove the text from the video. I would do
this to prevent essential overload for low-level learners and learners who are easily distracted by
extra content. Not all students are affected by this, but enough are to cause concern and address
it. It could be beneficial to create two versions of the video. One version could include text and
one version could exclude text. This way teachers could choose which video would best suit
their class as some class have high-level learners who can process all the features at once
whereas other classes are like mine. Those classes could benefit from the no text feature design.
Overall Impression and Analysis
Overall, my students enjoy watching and singing along with the video. It is simple and aligns
directly to the poem that we are learning. There are several poems and videos that were created
similar to this one, so that students are familiar with the style and how it repeats. It does not
have any extra material or content to distract students attention. The colors contrast nicely
against each other and the text color pops out rather than blending into the background which
helps those who are reading the text. An important factor is it is developmentally appropriate for
this age group. The run time is short to maintain their limited attention span since children at this
age have an attention span of 15 minutes or less in some cases.
I like that the creator uses human voices rather than computer generated voices. This helps the
students maintain interest as well. Another important aspect in regards to the text is how the
students can pause the video and refer to the written text that they learned. The creator extended
the video to play the poem lyric twice within one viewing. This helps students to rehearse the
lyrics again for better memorization. Eventually, students will be able to recall the words
without visual assistance even low-level students. This is because they are exposed to the
material in multiple ways and repeatedly over an extended period of time. Additionally, the
video is downloaded into a file for students to use on the student desktops. Students can refer
back to the poem and the video at any point during their computer rotation time. This helps
students with word identification as they can refer to the video and the poem in their journal,
learning rhyming patterns, recalling the poem, and using the internet appropriately. In all, this
video can add to the learning resources available to early childhood teachers.
Multimedia Product Critique #1: Ford

References

Mayer, R.E. & Pilegard C. (2014) Principles for managing essential processing in multimedia
learning: segmenting, pre-training, and modality principles. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The
Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. (pp. 316-344). New York: Cambridge. (e.g.
Chapter 13)

The Kiboomers. (2015, January). Five Little Hearts. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5noNWgcAAE.