12: Digital Media Practices to Support Middle Grade Students’ Health and Well-Being

Digital media learning activities depend on student capability to perceive digitized visual stimuli. For many students, long duration and high stimulus levels of visual learning resources can adversely affect the cognitive load available to engage with the material. The programme discussed in this chapter suggests elements that can decrease the extraneous (non-task related) cognitive load in the classroom and supports student and teacher health and well-being.

Developed over five years in a Science classroom in Western Australia, the programme includes suggestions for classroom lighting, wall décor, PowerPoint presentation construction, safe parameters for videos, seating plans, digital media settings, and hats. These elements are not dependent on each other; however, they work together well when situationally appropriate. The suggestions in this chapter increase the suite of adjustments and accommodations to support young adolescents to access learning activities. Some elements provide whole class support while other bespoke student accommodations can be added to individual education plans or similar. Overall, the changes have low financial cost and can be applied across learning environment that use digital media.