C. What Steps are Involved in Implementing Multimedia Activities?

Implementing multimedia activities in a classroom environment requires some planning. Many issues will surface, such as:

• What are the goals of the activity?
• Which standards and benchmarks will be addressed?
  

Steven Covey offered this advice in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:

To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you're going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.

Adopting that advice to the implementation of multimedia activities means that you should begin by determining the desired outcomes and defining how they will be measured, and, then, design the learning activity. This is often referred to as "Backward Design" since the process begins with outcomes and assessment measures (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998). This course will implement backward design through the model illustrated in the table below -- DDD-E or Decide, Design, Develop, and Evaluate.

Although it is helpful to use this model as a guide, in "real-life" the steps and phases may overlap or they may occur in a different sequence. Also note that the Evaluate phase encompasses all of the other phases -- in other words, it is on-going throughout the process (although it will be addressed primarily in Lesson 5).