Reports findings from a five-day summer institute conducted with 27 practicing primary grade teachers that was part of a year-long professional development project that supported teachers' thinking about children's arithmetical understanding. Indicates that teachers developed two hypotheses about children's thinking and what it means for children…

Introduces an inquiry-based unit in which students investigate characteristic environmental changes during outdoor activities. Integrates technology with data analysis, virtual field trips, and multimedia projects. Focuses on Content Standard A of the National Science Education Standards (NSES). (YDS)

This planned session discusses access to digital multimedia objects; integrated intellectual access, resource discovery, finding aids, and cross-domain metadata among museum, archive, and library information systems; information sharing; electronic access to a historic costume collection; access to digital music libraries; and digital…

Considers how multimedia enhancements affect how much individuals learn from online news websites. Suggests that picture and audio are particularly powerful psychological cues. Finds that multimedia tends to hinder memory for story content and leads to negative evaluations of the site and its content, but improves memory for advertisements.…

Describes the work of Fabula, a multinational, multidisciplinary project funded by the European Commission. Focuses on the evaluation of a bilingual multimedia storybook with primary school children in both Welsh- and English-medium settings in South Wales. Explores insights on language preferences, learning strategies, and hypotheses about the…

Discusses the correspondence between constructivist design and the creation of multimedia projects. Argues that if students and teachers are exposed to multimedia presentations and are offered opportunities to participate in workshops or classroom activities using multimedia technology, those with interest will use it to demonstrate content area…

Two experiments explored the integration of animated agents into multimedia environments in the context of R. E. Mayer's (2001) cognitive theory of multimedia learning. The spoken-narration-only condition outperformed other conditions, with no differences between printed text and printed text with spoken narration. (Author)

Identifies problems associated with teaching and learning a complex subject such as engineering design within a restrictive educational environment. Describes the development of a Web-based computer aid in the United Kingdom which employs a multimedia virtual environment incorporating domain-specific knowledge-based systems to emulate a range of…

Describes a study that investigated whether exposure to multimedia and presentation software on laptop computers influenced student achievement in a high school science course. Compares results with the use of traditional paper-based materials and reports that computer use had a favorable effect on students' grades. (LRW)

Discusses usability engineering for multimedia learning environments and considers how it can benefit the design and development of educational software. Describes the design and development of interactive multimedia software for second-language learning that included input from users and field testing for usability. (Author/LRW)

Describes a qualitative study of preservice mathematics teachers' use of higher-order thinking as they used an interactive multimedia program based on a situated learning framework. Analyzes types of talk used by the students as they worked with the program and classifies it as social, procedural, and lower-order and higher-order thinking.…

Uses interactive overviews (IOs), a type of advance organizer, to explore the effect of interaction between organizer structure and prior knowledge on novices' ability to meet learning goals. Participants were assigned to learn about ecosystems with a hypermedia program. Results indicated that the ecosystem IO aided learners in meeting an…

Describes a project that used a multimedia tool, Hyperstudio, to facilitate collaborative critical inquiry in the classrooms. Discusses the students' reaction, infusing academic rigor into multimedia projects, students' accomplishments and approach to challenges, and project evaluation. Sidebars list steps in conducting multimedia projects and…

Explains the Networked Interactive Media in Schools (NIMIS) project based in Germany, England, and Portugal that is supported by the EU (European Union), and describes software that was designed to encourage literacy and creative writing using cartoon-style stories with pictures, sound, and text with the help of an agent. (Author/LRW)

Investigates the role of data management in multimedia digital libraries, and its implications for the design of database management systems. Introduces the notions of content abstraction and content independence. Proposes a blueprint of a new class of database technology, which supports the basic functionality for the management of both content…