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More and more teachers find interesting multimedia resources from the Web to work with their students and the computer tools are more and more efficient to transfer information into the classroom, whether it be stored on a local or a distant server.
Some problems remain (just to mention a few) concerning the best way to build up teaching activities :
Isn't there too much information on the web?
Can my computer use it without technical difficulties?
Is the information in a 'raw' form or 'ready to be used'?
What preparation must be made before the lesson?
Is the computer tool used 'open to quick adjustments'?
How can student learning be fostered by technology?
How can the students practically work and really learn without spending too much time on secundary matters?
How to organise the information for a student to spend some time on it and find it interesting to investigate?
What can the teacher collect at the end of a lesson?
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Some answers to these questions are to be found in web activities based on detailed lesson templates that can include interactivity as Robert Godwin-Jones mentions in his page on language learning and the WEB (interactive language teaching )
In past years, when the internet began to develop, it became easy to decide to work on a topic and gather relevant information ready to be fixed into a word processed page with a generous Select/Copy/Paste manipulation ... but that is not pedagogy.
Several didactic programs exist on the Web and can be profitably used by the sudents, but when teachers do not find exactly what they expect, they are tempted to produce their own material.
In order to be efficient while teaching with multimedia, the basic idea now is to organise the students workspace for a time limited activity that is neither too simple nor to complicated. It should be adapted to their level or cope with several levels. The students will have to gather and rearrange bits and pieces of information in their own way from preselected sources, have an opportunity to propose different solutions, get a feed-back from the computer before submitting their worksheet to a teacher's examination. Words, sounds and pictures can combine to make sense and give various approaches to a single topic : the activity must neither be expeditive nor time consuming. It must highlight what is necessary to pin point and memorize, as well as give facilities and pleasure to generate a personal production.
That is the goal behind the resources offered on this Comenius server concerning interactive teaching with multimedia.
Here is a preview on how to develop a project (from the template 'arguments'):
Jean-Pierre Palasse
ICT teacher's tutor
Institute for Training Teachers in Burgundy,
Dijon, France
May 2004
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