January 2002 — Applications
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Mount Diablo High School Discovers Success With the Digital Safari Multimedia Academy
I believe the way we teach multimedia is one of the things that makes us different. We use integrated projects from our academic classes to teach high-quality multimedia skills utilizing professional standard tools. These tools include most of the Macromedia suite of products, such as Director 8.5, Dreamweaver 4, Flash 5, Fireworks 4, FreeHand 10 and SoundEdit 16.
All of our courses are taught using board of education-approved curriculum and California's state academic standards. We cannot change the standard curriculum, but we can change the way it is delivered. Our students work in development teams of four on integrated projects. Teachers collaboratively plan the student projects so elements of each project are accomplished in academic classes as well as in the multimedia lab. Students receive a project packet that contains the outline and expectations for the project, as well as the rubrics for each subject involved. Both the academic and multimedia teachers assess the projects when they are completed. The multimedia teacher evaluates the multimedia, while the academic teacher grades the content rubric for each academic subject. Some projects have a culminating performance piece that may be evaluated by all of the teachers. Peer evaluations are also used with some projects.
At the end of last year, students worked on a combined history and multimedia project about Native Americans in history. We designed a project that involved a researched and cited essay with note cards on Native American tribes. After the essays were finished, the student-work teams developed Web sites about the researched tribes and the issues they faced. The project resulted in 14 sites put together with a main index page, which is located at www.ccc'e.k12.ca.us/mdtech/nativeamerican. These sites were designed using Macromedia Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, FreeHand, along with Bryce 4 and Adobe Photoshop. The site demonstrates the diversity of design and the educational talents of our students. We try to allow for the maximum amount of creativity in interface design and use of the tools. In a realistic design environment, different designers will use the same tools in different ways.
Student Success Equals Academy Success
We've come a long way since we started in 1996 with a group of 70 intrepid juniors who had no idea what was in store, and three teachers who had a concept and some seemingly wild ideas. Our students have won 13 awards in the California Student Media and Multimedia Festival over the past four years. Last year Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, nominated the Digital Safari Multimedia Academy for the Computerworld Smithsonian Honors Program. The Academy was selected to have a case study placed in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Information Technology archives. In addition, the teachers involved in the program, including myself, have accepted numerous other awards.
Last spring, 32 of our students and four teachers worked 14 hours a day during the week of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose, Calif., to chronicle the event on the Web. The effort included several thousand pictures and more than 500 HTML pages. But the biggest thrill is having reached the point where nearly 90 percent of our students go onto college or into a postsecondary training program, which is unfortunately not our school's norm.
