Making it work: How my Media Literacy project came about for EDUA 7300

 

The Idea

    Media Literacy is quickly becoming a topic that I am passionate about. When I started thinking about my final project for EDUA 7300, I knew it would be about Media Literacy. I wanted to create something that would educate people about Media Literacy, but also be something that I could use in my high school classroom with my students. 

    I started out with an idea of a smartphone with apps that a person could click on and it would take them to different topics about Media Literacy, such as "What is Media Literacy?" "Fact-Checking," "Social Media," quizzes and resource articles. I wanted it to be interactive as well as informative.

    I also wanted it to be a lesson that could be done in class or remotely. I also wanted it to be able to used by parents as well. I also thought of incorporating some interactive elements, such as having participants take quizzes and scroll through a fun slideshow. I really wanted to make an impact on explaining Media Literacy.

The Process

    I am most familiar with Adobe Express and Canva when it comes to making projects. I thought I would try something different this time. I looked at ThingLink and Prezi. I event tried out some templates on Prezi, watched videos about Prezi, really thought this project would work in Prezi. Until…I don’t understand presentations in Prezi. The clicking here and the screen zooming in somewhere else made me dizzy. Plus, I couldn’t figure out how to link my apps to the slides that went with them and then go back to the app. I stayed up until midnight thinking and rethinking and overthinking this project, and then it hit me! Just do it in Canva because you know that and you are familiar with that program.

Creating

    So, on to Canva I jumped and I figured out that I could link the apps to their respective pages and the pages could link back to the main page. Wow! New discovery! I quickly went through my storyboard I created and started creating each app and each slide.

    I kept the same app icons from my storyboard, but I did change up each slide a bit to incorporate more multimedia. I recorded audio for several slides, and learned to upload the audio in a separate Canva file and then download that file as a video. I then would upload the audio video into its respective slide, so that the viewer could click on the audio or not click on the audio.

    I also added more links to various websites, new videos, graphics and text. My favorite part was recording my voice with a free online program called voicechanger.io. It was fun becoming a robot for my artificial intelligence slide.

    Finally, it all came together. I learned how to use Canva even more for presentations and projects, which was fun. I also learned a lot about integrating different forms of multimedia.

The Final Result