Had the precedent set in 1920 been followed, the school library would long since have established its image as a media center and library schools would have been providing training in the nonbook aspects of school librarianship. (Author/AB)

Suggests that multimedia are designed for single, stand-alone computers. Provides strategies for trainers who are considering networking their multimedia workstations. (JOW)

Reviewed research on the design of multimedia explanations. Findings show these effects of multimedia instructional design: (1) a multimedia effect; (2) a coherence effect; (3) a spatial contiguity effect; and (4) a personalization effect. Discusses each of these effects and shows how the same instructional design can be effective across different…

Comments on the papers of this theme issue, which are concerned with the impact of verbal and nonverbal representations in acquiring expertise in complex domains. Outlines lessons from first generation work in this field and issues for second generation research. (SLD)

Presents a matrix of skills necessary for multimedia development. Skills are identified in business, artistic, and technical areas. These skills are then applied to the following reasons for multimedia use: to condense time and material; to effect rapid skills transfer; and to manage feedback and evaluation. (MES)

Intended to provide a basic understanding of virtual reality (VR) from an educational perspective, this article describes the debate between conceptual and technological orientations to VR; the conceptual orientation to VR; technological definitions of VR, artificial reality, and cyberspace; dimensions of VR; and VR's impact on education. (11…

Reviews two software programs: (1) "My Mediatext Workshop," an integrated media program based on a simple word processing program that joins sounds and graphics through media links; and (2) "Aesopolis," a CD-ROM product that displays classic paintings of scenes from Aesop's fables and enables students to read and hear the…

We tested the effectiveness of an interactive, video CD-ROM in teaching persons with intellectual disabilities (ID) about their human rights. Thirty-nine participants with ID were trained using both a classroom activity-based version of the training program and the interactive CD-ROM in a counterbalanced presentation. All individuals were pre- and…

The purpose of this case study is to better understand the relationships between Web usability and students' perceived learning in the design and implementation of Web-based multimedia (WBMM) tutorials in blended courses. Much of the current research in this area focuses on the use of multimedia as a replacement for classroom instruction rather…

This study developed an interactive multimedia-based software program for Optics instruction, which was expected to overcome the imperfection of traditional optical labs. The researcher evaluated the effectiveness of the program through an experimental study that compared the learning outcomes of the students who used and did not use the software.…

Teachers and students often express an aversion to poetry based on their experiences with printbased poetry texts that typically dominate school curricula. Given this challenge and the potential affordances of new and multimodal technologies, we investigate how preservice and inservice teachers enrolled in a new literacies master's course began to…

After 18 months of research and many practice sessions, Sponge opened in the fall of 2005. This year, Sponge will provide language classes for over 350 children from newborn to seven years in the Seattle area. This language program offers Spanish, Mandarin, French and Japanese--all taught by native speakers. While the staff sets out to create a…

Decisions related to the implementation of audio in e-learning are perplexing for many instructional designers, and deciphering theory and principles related to audio use can be difficult for practitioners. Yet, as bandwidth on the Internet increases, digital audio is becoming more common in online courses. This article provides a review of…

A survey of hardware and software technologies was conducted to identify suitable technologies for the development of instructional modules representing various instructional approaches. The approaches modeled were short PowerPoint presentations, chalk-and-talk type of lectures and software tutorials. The survey focused on identifying application…