Multimedia may change the way children learn
Multimedia may change the way children learn
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Ask a computer salesman what multimedia is, and he'll most likely tell you that it means a PC with a CD ROM drive, a stereo sound card and a pair of speakers. He may add a joystick or an MPEG playback card to this configuration for good measure.
It's really unfortunate. Multimedia is not just games and music. It's much, much more than that. Multimedia is actually the combined use of video, animation, still images, graphics, text and sound to convey information. The only reason CD ROM has been so closely connected to multimedia is that it is the most cost- effective medium for storing multimedia data -- which comes in hundreds of megabytes. As you already know, one CD ROM can store up to 680 MB of computer data, and it doesn't cost much to duplicate CD ROMs.
Multimedia is interactive. The word means that we, users of multimedia materials, have control over what we want to see and hear, how much we want to see and hear, and where we want to go next. Next to its multi-sensory approach, this interactive nature is what gives this mode of communication its strongest potential in changing the way our children learn.
One thing that frustrates me tremendously is the low quality of education our children receive at Indonesian public and private schools. Their days at school basically involve two activities: Copying facts into their notebooks, and then memorizing them. It's clear that their teachers have prepared the lessons in a great rush because the materials are so poorly organized and the language is so difficult to understand that my wife almost always has to rewrite whatever is in my daughter's notebooks.
Every year, Indonesian schools require parents to buy a new set of textbooks for their children. Yet, these books are seldom used -- a blessing in disguise since most of them are pretty close to garbage anyway. It's amazing how such low quality books were able to get the official permit for use in schools. It's equally amazing that any school would agree to use them.
The yearly outlay for new textbooks makes me wonder if the world of Indonesian elementary school children has become as fast-moving as that of computer users like you and me. Elementary social and natural sciences, arithmetic and Bahasa Indonesia are obviously changing so fast nowadays that the textbooks require updating more frequently than these children celebrate their birthdays.
At any rate, multimedia is definitely one possible cure for the chronic illness the Indonesian education system is suffering, although its introduction will require a total re-engineering of the learning and teaching process in Indonesian schools. This can only become a reality if the government and all its apparatuses are truly committed to giving our young generation a better education.
Today, when an elementary school pupil is told to learn about the human heart, all he has to do is memorize the parts. His teacher writes them on the board, and he copies them into his notebook. If he can regurgitate them, he'll get a good grade on his test. If, shortly after the test he forgets all the parts, it doesn't really matter.
However, if he's willing to go further, -- driven by his own curiosity, perhaps -- he'll have to find a good textbook on the human body. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of good books available, but they are never used in schools.
Books have several limitations, though. At best, the child can read the text and examine a series a color pictures. Arrows indicate the direction of blood flow. He is using only his eyes, thus it is uni-sensory.
If he gets lost, he will have to go back to the text and, after reading and gaining enough understanding of a specific topic, jump back to the pictures to continue his exploration. Jumping back and forth like this wastes a lot of time.
Another inherent limitation of books is that they are linear in progression. This is a problem because we don't always study things in a linear fashion. We get attracted and distracted by a lot of things when we learn. We may want to skip over the material that we already know well and jump into something we still don't know much about.
The performance of Indonesian teachers depend very much on their mood. Unfortunately seasoned teachers are too busy teaching at several different schools and giving private classes that they barely have the energy to pay attention to their effectiveness communicating with their students.
Having heard, read and seen so much about interactive multimedia learning materials, I envision the following scenario: A teacher with a group of third-grade pupils are seated in a darkened room. Forming a semi-circle, all of them are facing a large display monitor. They're about to study the human heart.
On the monitor, a video is playing. A human heart rotates slowly in front of the pupils so that they can see it from all sides. Then the heart begins to contract and expand. A rhythmic pounding sound, like something from a suspense movie, comes from the speakers. And then animation takes over. The heart on the screen is cut into two, exposing the left and right sections. The pupils are able to see the atriums and ventricles. The voice of the narrator is now heard from the speakers, explaining to them what each part of the heart is called. In addition to providing the correct spelling, text also appears on the screen to reinforce retention of these names in the student's memory
When blood circulation is discussed, the children can actually see where the blood comes from and where it goes. There's no need to jump around. There's no need for them to shift their attention from what they're seeing on the screen. If the multimedia presentation is well-prepared, it will be so captivating that there won't be any opportunity for distraction.
After the presentation is over, the teacher, who has been following the same presentation, will ask questions to test retention. Perhaps, a discussion among the youngsters will follow.
One benefit of interactive multimedia is that, as opposed to books, our children can study things in a non-linear way. Using links that are called hypertext/hypermedia, they can instantly jump from one subject to another, following their train of thought and curiosity. Using the links, they can jump back to where they were, much like using the navigating tools in Windows Help modules.
Interactive multimedia, which has to be stored in a non- sequential storage medium (of which the video tape is one good example), allows them to jump around instantly. Furthermore, interactive multimedia learning materials are portable. They may come in a CD ROM or a video disc, which means that our children can also use them at home. This gives another edge to multimedia, as our children can pursue knowledge at their own pace. They can explore the unknown without fear of being ridiculed by their classmates -- something which is rather difficult to avoid in an Indonesian classroom.
First of all, the government should seriously consider the benefits of multimedia. Then a centralized body should be established to set the standards. At the same time, the private sector should be invited to invest in multimedia learning material production houses. Indonesian teacher training colleges should emphasize research of multimedia learning materials. Open contests can be held regularly to find the best multimedia materials made in Indonesia.
The most difficult part of all this will be setting up a control mechanism that ensures our sin of subjecting our children to low quality text books is not repeated. Only high quality multimedia learning materials should be permitted for use in schools.