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.