High-quality multimedia products make use of technology to further the understanding of a topic in ways that traditional media cannot accomplish. This article describes the use of multimedia in collaborative student projects dealing with an area of study in the standard curriculum for their state or country. The projects facilitated the…

Electronic field tripping is a relatively new form of large-scale distance education that attempts to provide contextually rich learning materials embedded within a coherent educational content base. Using Dewey's (1943) framework for the natural learning impulses of children, we describe the potential pedagogical benefits afforded by electronic…

Video offers an immediacy that can stimulate students' thinking. Sharing the experience of a film documentary in a classroom setting, for instance, creates a bridge between the everyday experience of students and unfamiliar new information. The human faces and voices on the screen and the comfortable structure of narrative can personalize abstract…

Whether electronic books, CD-ROM'S, or interactive media are beneficial in teaching reading should be determined on evidence that they aid reading comprehension. Reading is worthless unless one comprehends. In order to examine the effectiveness of electronic books in a reading program, the characteristics and attributes of how…

This article reports the use of a computer-based collaborative learning instruction designed to help students develop understanding of image formation by lenses. The study aims to investigate how students, working in dyads and mediated by multimedia computer-assisted learning (CAL) programs, construct shared knowledge and understanding. The…

In this paper we present a CDN-based system, namely the COMODIN system, which is a media on-demand platform for synchronous cooperative work which supports an explicitly-formed cooperative group of distributed users with the following integrated functionalities: request of an archived multimedia session, sharing of its playback, and collaboration…

This article considers power in text-based collaborations and proposes that in order for criticality to be directed towards the power structures at play in the discourse of collaborations, the interpretive strategies of participants need to hold in the balance the explicit or overt intentions of those with whom they are collaborating, and the…

Podcasting is an automated technology that allows listeners to subscribe and listen to digitally recorded audio shows. Once one subscribes to a podcast, the audio files are automatically downloaded to a computer?s media player by podcatcher software periodically throughout the day. Podcasting has been used primarily for disseminating recorded…

This article describes a specific effort to create a multimedia training technology (A Child Protective Service Investigation Simulator or CPS Simulator) for a representative group of street-level public servants--child protective service (CPS) workers. The article first provides some background on why bias in this area is a significant problem,…

Multimedia is increasingly being used in computer-based learning, and the general indication is that this trend will persist for a while to come. One rationale for this trend the assumption that multimedia has properties that can aid learning, particularly the learning of abstract subjects. One area which has long been seen as a target for the use…

The Victorian period produced a diverse and rich range of historical source materials including census returns, photographs, film, personal reminiscences, music, cartoons, and posters. Recent changes to the history curriculum emphasise the acquisition of enquiry skills alongside developing knowledge and understanding, which necessitates reference…

The Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is featured. The 21-year-old center is an ongoing experiment in how electronics can shape the future, and it helped pioneer digital videography and computer multimedia capabilities, among other innovations. So it's no surprise that it is home to Lifelong Kindergarten, a high-tech…

Virtual Enterprises International is a high school program that teaches students about business by having them create and operate their own virtual firms. The program enables students to learn about careers, develop interpersonal and organizational skills, and use technology. The New York City Virtual Enterprises (VE) Central Office invited the…

The rapid development of computer and Internet technologies has made e-Learning become an important learning method. There has been a considerable increase in the needs for multimedia instructional material in e-Learning recently as such content has been shown to attract a learner's attention and interests. The multimedia content alone, however,…

Digital publishing is a field lurching along many paths and alleyways of experimentation. For their potential influence, however, recent approaches bear watching. In this article, the author shares the story of Jason on his personal decision-making struggles on using digital versions against conventional textbooks. The author also discusses…