June 2002 — Special Feature

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Multimedia Projectors: A Key Component in the Classroom of the Future

Teacher, Student Benefits

When asked how multimedia projectors affected the teaching and learning experience, several areas of influence were identified, including visual aid, greater flexibility for alternative teaching methods, enhanced teacher demonstrations, heightened student awareness and customized curriculum applications.

Visual aid. Multimedia projectors allow teachers to provide diverse content to all students in the classroom at once, allowing students to have a visual and colorful learning experience during a given lesson. These projectors are perfect for this generation's visually oriented youth because they help make abstract concepts easier to understand.

Alternative way of teaching. By not forcing a teacher to rely solely on books, a multimedia projector makes more educational information available to students. It changes conventional habits and rituals in the classroom. In fact, some survey participants believe a multimedia projector could soon replace the chalkboard and overhead projector.

Makes teaching easier and better. Instead of having students crowd around a PC, the entire class can view one big screen without difficulty. The multimedia projector has made the teaching of Internet-related subjects and the demonstration of new software applications much easier - heightening stu-dents' awareness and expectations, while captivating their attention and increasing their motivation. The projectors also accommodate the electronic submission and viewing of student work.

Customized curriculum applications. Projectors are being used for a variety of curriculum-specific applications. In language arts, a teacher linked up to an author's Web site to provide greater insight and impact to a reading assignment. A science teacher created a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate a frog dissection. In social studies, a teacher developed a tornado presentation for increased audio and visual impact. For math classes, projectors have been used to teach students how to work with spreadsheets, calculate formulas, and utilize charts and graphs. Athletic departments show practice and game films, as well as illustrate plays, with the ability to pause, reverse and update them spontaneously.

Summary of Findings

With an average of 30 classrooms per school, 68 percent of respondents indicated they are currently using multimedia projectors. Among these users, more than 80 percent are using portable units in the classroom to display multimedia presentations and project images from the computer screen for teaching. Teachers believe the minimum number of projectors each school should have is 16, even though most schools average less than four. Despite keen interest in multimedia projectors, more than 90 percent of those surveyed have traditional technologies available to them (see chart below), including: TVs (97 percent), VCRs (96.2 percent), PC networks (86.4 percent), and laptop or desktop computers (82 percent). In addition, fewer than 25 percent of those surveyed have access to interactive whiteboards and DVD players, which are perfect complements to multimedia projectors.