This paper demonstrates the use of Project-Based Multimedia Learning with undergraduate and graduate students studying Adolescent Learning and Development. Support for this project has come from PT3 funding through grants obtained by our CCNY colleague Norman Shapiro. This paper will explain how we implement a complex multimedia educational project for pre and in-service teachers. The ultimate products are multimedia resource websites for teachers on teaching strategies that promote active, meaningful learning. This complex project involves both individual and group assignments. The approach is based on a synthesis of theories including the "BACEIS Model of Improving Thinking" (Hartman & Sternberg, 1993) which explains intellectual behavior as a joint function of reciprocal interactions between a student's cognition and affect (emotions) and between these aspects of the student and features of academic and nonacademic environments. Other theories include cognitive constructivism (Piaget, 1973), social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978) and situated learning (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989).

The project entails use of a variety of technological strategies and tools, including computer software (MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS FrontPage, Inspiration, iMovie), storyboarding and digital cameras. The purpose of this paper is to demystify the process of conducting such a complex project by demonstrating, step-by-step, how students work is structured and scaffolded. Five primary scaffolds are used: 1. Modeling processes and products; 2. Graphic organizer outlining expected website components; 3. Cooperative learning; 4. Storyboard form; and 5. Breaking the complex project into a sequence of manageable parts and making periodic homework assignments to work on parts of the project. Scaffolding throughout the semester on technology assignments and their components is essential so that students aren't overwhelmed. Students aren't expected to master the technology skills introduced - instead the goal is to provide them with a foundation for meaningful learning of these and other technology applications they might use in teaching and learning. Learning to use several new programs can help them overcome future fears of new applications instead of them turning away without even trying. Usually different students become leaders for different applications within a group and they start to teach the other group members, which enhances the collaboration. An important learning experience for all students is to see that not everybody is an expert in everything. This enhances their understanding of their differences and commonalities, and improves tolerance, collaboration, and appreciation of each other’s strengths.

Students are from several undergraduate and graduate classes over two years. Each semester students select from a list of teaching strategies which promote active, meaningful learning, such as: problem-based learning, cooperative learning, peer tutoring, graphic organizers, and role-playing. Each topic forms a group. At the beginning of the semester the due dates of the assignments and specific technology lessons are laid out in the syllabus. During the semester the students start working on the different assignments so that they are completed towards the end of the semester, when it is time to create the website. As a scaffold, at the beginning of the semester, students are given a graphic organizer illustrating the components of their website so that they could see how their work during the semester would progressively help them develop the contents they need for the site so that at the end, all they have to do is to upload their resources. In preparation for groups of students to script, shoot, and edit their own videos on how to use the teaching strategy, each student individually does a 10-15 minute in-class demonstration of how her/his teaching strategy works. Student-constructed websites are intended to be genuine resource sites for pre and in-service teachers to learn about using the selected teaching strategies. They include: research papers on the teaching strategy, Internet and student-adapted lesson plans for using the strategy, Internet links with useful information on the strategy, and a brief video students cooperatively script, film and edit demonstrating some aspect of the teaching strategy.

Students' individual research papers (inquiry activity) are structured to provide teachers who access their websites with critical metacognitive knowledge for learning to use and transfer the teaching strategy to a variety of situations. This metacognitive knowledge includes what the research literature says about when and why to use the strategy, how to implement the strategy and what the expected outcomes of implementation are likely to be. Papers also include the students' own opinions of the teaching strategies, based on their experiences and research.

When Doris begins working with students many show fear and frustration concerning the unusual technology assignments. Initially many students are skeptical about the sense and feasibility of some tech assignments they are asked to do, all of which involve a major topic of the courses: teaching strategies for active, meaningful learning.

After facing the techno phobia some students have to overcome the next big obstacle, collaborating on a group project. Our students are very diverse but typically have numerous common challenges: single parents with more than one child, working full time, minority ethnic group, poor, and English is often not their native language. Our students are also extremely heterogeneous concerning their technology skills: from beginners to advanced computer users. Some do not have home computers with Internet access. These facts require a lot of flexibility and tolerance from all participants in group projects. Often Doris observes that students start working alone on a group project although their group members are an arm's length away. Encouraging and assuring them that this project must be a group effort can stimulate them to collaborate. Greatest collaboration is required for their website and the video.

When we start working on the one-minute video we begin by showing videos from previous semesters (models). Then we provide students with a storyboard form to help them consider what to demonstrate, why, when and how. This process results in students thinking about the teaching strategy in a total different way than they do while writing their research paper and it builds on their experiences planning and implementing their own classroom demonstrations. Vivid discussions between the group members arise during this process, which deepen their understanding of the teaching strategy. When the student teachers see themselves on tape for the first time a big surprise can be seen on their faces and they immediately start to self-reflect on their own teaching and begin thinking about changes and improvements.

Toward the end of the semester we begin creating the website. Doris leads students through a one-hour workshop on using MS FrontPage, which students grasp quickly as it is very similar to MS Word. Hope monitors student comprehension and progress and provides individual assistance to students as needed. It always amazes us to see how creative the groups become after a very short time. Students sometimes get carried away with the "bells and whistles" and without adequate supervision their websites can turn out to be more entertaining than educational.

In the last session of the semester, students finish uploading their files and each group shows its website. When seeing the completed website via a browser on the Internet for the first time, the students' doubts and skepticism disappear and students show intense pride in their accomplishments. Even some of the students who initially refuse or hesitate to use technology start to think about the use of technology in their future (or current) classrooms. Students commonly describe their experience in these courses as ‘awesome’ because of the technology components and what they have learned to benefit themselves and their students.

We document our work with the students in several stages including shots of students: working on their storyboards to script their videos, shots of students filming their videos and doing their editing, learning how to use MS FrontPage to develop websites, and presenting their group websites to the rest of the class. Videotaping occurs in the School of Education's Multimedia Center and surrounding classrooms. These videos show the ethnic diversity of our undergraduate and graduate education students, who have huge discrepancies in prior experience with using instructional technologies. Videos also show how much students found these tasks to be intrinsically motivating.

An important message throughout the semester is that there are human and physical resources to help students succeed, including the Multimedia Center where Doris and/or student assistants are always available to help students with their tech assignments. Just the assurance of support greatly helps reduce the techno phobia. It also helps to redress the digital divide problem of diverse resources, which affects our poor but heterogeneous students' possession of home computers with access to the Internet. During the semester some students aren't aware of their emerging competence in using the technology as they are so engrossed in the assignments and their regular lives that some become comfortable with technology without even noticing it!

Nevertheless the use of technology takes away time which would have been used for the content of the course. As for all curriculum questions you have to set priorities for a course and think about the most important issues. It is always emphasized that content quality is the most important priority and therefore the focus during grading - not the glitz of the tech assignments. Technology is the medium not the message. Education cannot ignore the fact anymore that technology is a part of our everyday life and so it is an important part of the today’s public school student, which justifies the use of technology in this course to this extent. In order for us as teachers to understand today’s public school students we have to understand how they live and that their lives, with Gameboys and Playstations have a lot more to do with technology than we think. If we want to reach today’s public school students we have to attract their attention and compete with Gameboys and Playstations. We should learn how to effectively integrate challenging educational technology in the classroom. In the New York City Public School System many classrooms have minimal access to working computers, especially with Internet access, which is a major obstacle to our students, who are teachers, face when they want to use technology in teaching. Educating the future teachers of the New York City Public school system in technology has important implications for our School of Education as this attracts future students to select our programs before others in our region.

Doris's personal learning experience includes understanding the different fears many people face when they sit in front of a computer. She has worked with computers for 19 years and never had any fear of using them. She has been both a programmer and a hardware designer and initially had trouble understanding certain students' reactions to using computers. Over time she began to understand students' background experiences and their cultures, and learned to communicate with them effectively. We both definitely enjoy the vast diversity of students within the School of Education at City College of New York.

Doris and Hope have been implementing technology in Adolescent Learning and Development courses since Spring 2001 but have implemented similar technology requirements in two other undergraduate courses: Human Learning and Instruction and Inquiry into Learning. We have learned a lot as instructors too, including the importance of teaching metacognitively: planning before the semester begins, monitoring and guiding students through the creation process, and evaluating the students and ourselves in ways that will help us plan to improve our future performance. We have learned to allow in-between phases of self-reflection for the individual students and the groups themselves to evaluate, revise, and thereby improve their work e.g. using feedback from Hope to clarify their portrayal of critical aspects of how to use their teaching strategy. Although the extent of novel and challenging technology-related tasks in our courses often lead to some attrition, students who stick with them usually feel that it was well worth the efforts because now they have valuable beginning tools for critical thinking about using technology as an aid to learning and instruction.

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Hartman, H. J., & Sternberg, R. J. (1993). A Broad BACEIS for Improving Thinking. Instructional Science 21(5), 401-425

Piaget, J. (1973). To Understand Is To Invent. Penguin Books, N.Y.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press: Cambridge