PRINT MEDIA

How to Design Printed Materials

Printed materials must be designed well to promote learning and better
appreciation of what is presented.
The following are factors to consider when designing printed materials
(Heinich, 1990).
1. Headings
 Label all text so readers can locate the information they need.
 Provide headings to allow learners to skim for an overview and to
retrieve information later.
 Use headings to show the organization of the content.
 Use side heads to call attention to important concepts.
 Use different type style for headings.
2. Writing Style
 State the main idea or theme at the beginning of text.
 Put topic sentences at beginning of each paragraph.
 Use simple sentences and writing style.
 Use active voice where possible.
 Include technical terms with definitions so they won’t be misconstrued
or misspelled.
3. Page Layout
 Provide ample white space to facilitate reading, note-taking and
location of information for review.
 Use unjustified right margins.
 Increase the space between lines in a note-taking handout to increase
the amount of information noted.
 Be clear and consistent in page layout.
4. Type Style/Mechanics
 Choose typeface styles with simple designs for headings.
 If material is typed, use a space and a half between lines for ease of
reading.
 Avoid breaking words at the end of lines.
  Limit the number of words per line to approximately the learner’s age,
for preteenagers.
5. Visuals
 Keep visuals simple.
 Direct attention to visuals through questions and activities.
 Place visuals as near the related text as possible.
 Use larger visuals if more detail is required.
6. Highlighting
 Highlighting techniques for printed materials include color, size of
type, italics and boldfacing.
 Highlight important ideas, thus limiting the demands on the learner to
locate key points and ideas.
 Do not use capitals for highlighting because they are difficult to read
within text.
 Avoid author-provided underlining because it has little or no effect on
retention of content

Conducting a Field Trip

A teacher should have a clear idea on how to prepare a class field trip by
following the given steps (Heinich, 1993).
1. Planning
 Have a clear purpose and objectives of the trip. A field trip should be
directly related to the regular course of study.
 Have a clear overview of the content of the trip. Preview the trip
yourself. An ocular inspection to the place is important so as not to
create problems during the trip.
 Make arrangements with the school principal, or other teachers
regarding the planned trip.
 Secure consent of the parents for students to make the trip.
 Arrange transportation.
 Provide sufficient supervision. Emphasize appropriate dress. Set up
safety precautions and ground rules.
2. Preparing
Clarify to the students the purpose of the trip. You may build the interest
of the students in the trip through some preparatory activities such as:
 Class discussion
 Stories
 Reports
 Films
 Teacher-student planning
Provide directions or instructions to students regarding
 What to look for
 Questions to ask
 Information to be gathered
 Notes to be made
 Individual or group assignments
3. Conducting
 Arrive at the field trip site on time.
 Encourage students to do observations and to ask questions.
 Get available materials that are provided in the site for future use.
 Account for all students before the student trip.
4. Follow-up
Conduct follow-up of the field trip through
 Sharing of the experiences
 Reports
 Projects
 Demonstrations
 Creative Writing
 Independent Individual Research
 Exhibits of pictures, maps, charts, graphs, drawings, etc.

NON-PROJECTED DISPLAY MATERIALS

How to Design Bulletin Board Display
Developing a bulletin board is the task of a classroom teacher so that
classrooms will look attractive and inviting to the students. The following are
ways on how to develop a bulletin board display (Heinich, 1993).
  Decide upon an objective. Limit the display to one topic or objective.
Presenting more than one main idea usually results in confusion on
the part of the viewers.
 Generate a theme and incorporate it into a headline.
 Work out a rough layout.
 Gather the materials.
 Put up the display.

AUDIO MEDIA
Creating Audio
Nowadays, creating audio via audio recording technologies is very easy.
Audio equipment is now a portable tool for recording sound and taking notes.

There are some other software that let you record sound such as Audacity,
Garageband, Traverso, Ardour DAW, and Jokosher among others.

VIDEO MEDIA
Producing a video is not an easy endeavor and requires time to be able to
create one. It goes into the three processes namely, preproduction,
production and post-production to achieve your goal of a good video.

ONLINE PLATFORMS
This pandemic has changed the ways on how we do things. Since the health
measures in place do not allow for face-to-face physical classes, teachers
should be armed with knowledge of, and creativity in, the different tools
available for distance learning in support of the continuation of the respective
academic calendar of educational institutions.

Because you are the digital natives, I am assured that you will find it easy and
interesting to explore tools in your journey of choosing and creating teaching/
learning materials for elementary grades, or even transforming a classroom
into an online one. For the list of online platforms below, you can access them
by providing the necessary information about yourself during the Sign-up
process or just by linking your existing google account to the platform.

Please note that the list is exhaustive but, I just limited them to the tools which
I know and/or use.
Online Chat Facebook https://www.messenger.com/
Messenger
Videoconferencing Skype https://www.skype.com/en/
Zoom https://zoom.us/
Microsoft Teams https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/microsoft-
teams/
Google Meet https://meet.google.com/
Online Whiteboard Google Jamboard https://jamboard.google.com/
Miro https://miro.com/app/
Ziteboard https://app.ziteboard.com/
Online Learning Google Doc https://docs.google.com/
Materials Google Slides https://docs.google.com/
presentation/
Google Sheets https://docs.google.com/
spreadsheets/
Forms, Surveys, & Google Forms https://docs.google.com/forms/
Polls Survey Monkey https://
www.surveymonkey.com/
Mentimeter https://www.mentimeter.com/
Online Classrooms Google Classrooms https://classroom.google.com/
Vedamo https://www.vedamo.com/
virtual-classroom/
Edmodo https://new.edmodo.com/