- Preface
- I. A new era
- • Globalization, the first sign of change
- • English - the new planetary language
- • A change in the scale of education
- II. Education and its context
- • Education and business
- • Education and the state
- III. The digital habit
- • The new digital culture
- • Digital projects
- • Time for assimilation
- IV. The extended school
- • Education at a critical moment
- • A definition of the extended school
- • Yesterday: concentrated knowledge
- • Today: knowledge disseminated
- • Tomorrow: knowledge connected
- V. New tools and old
- • Chalk and blackboard
- • The spinning globe
- • Microscopic life
- • Desk and work
- • The computer garden
- • Slides and liquid Crystal
- • Projectors and projections
- • Dry and digital copies
- VI. Digital transition
- • Continuing education
- • Cultural exchange
- • The mental switch
- • Critical thought
- • Internal communication
- • Educational frontier posts
- • Technological updating
- • Creativity and deregulation
- VII. Means and ends
- • Values for today and for always
- • Technocentrality and consumerism
- • Software in the public domain
- VIII. The digital library
- • Atoms versus bits
- • The dual book
- • Digital quality
- • Reading and writing
- • Text and hypertext
- • Consult and navigate
- IX. The home computer
- • A new piece of furniture or a new instrument?
- • Playthings and electronic toys
- • Robots for assembly
- • The silent printer
- • The community network
- X. New instruments of thought
- • Word processors, a new way of writing
- • A friendly mouse
- • More portable learning
- • Designing with computers
- • The golden link in communications: the modem
- • Electronic mail always arrives at its destination
- • Fax, a threatened species
- • WWW: three magic letters
- • Reliable and accessible data bases
- • Tables, abacus and spreadsheet
- • The Scanner, a bridge between two worlds
- • New interfaces and old keyboards
- • Presentation aids
- • So-called multimedia
- • Digital cameras without film
- • Digital videos in schools
- • Music for all
- XI. Presence and remote presence
- • Features of distance education
- • The three generations
- • Synchronous and asynchronous moments
- • Spaces for meeting
- • Classrooms open to the world
- • The advantages
- • New educational niches
- • A new type of teacher and student
- XII. Talents and handicaps
- • The right to communication
- • The obstacle of the keyboard
- • The obstacle of the screen
- • The expression of individual talent
- Conclusions
X. NEW INSTRUMENTS OF THOUGHT
So-called multimedia
The possibility of being able to bring together and present in the same place text, video, photographs and animation, all inter-related, is no longer a novelty. These tools are in constant evolution. Only a decade ago a team of experts in electronics would have been needed to bring together all these parts (hence the name "multimedia"). Each expert was responsible for one part of the equipment, whether computer, camera, video recorder, etc. Interleaving the various productions was a gigantic task. Today the process has become so simplified that multimedia productions have virtually become another school task in the hands of the students themselves. All traditional media are converging into one, and the multimedia concept will become just a single digital media.
Multimedia is currently based on the CD-ROM, a compact disk with a vast digital capacity containing information that is not erased which can be consulted again and again without becoming damaged. Compact disks can also be recorded. The capacity of CD-ROMS will grow with time, and an impressive volume of information will be able to be stored with excellent image quality. A single CD-ROM could today contain all the books a student might need from first grade through to the completion of university studies. However, as with other fields of learning, technology has advanced faster than ideas, and what is currently available on the market in the way of educational multimedia leaves a lot to be desired. In general the style of traditional illustrated (or spoken) books is repeated. Something similar happened with the early cinema films, which mimicked the theater, so that some years had to pass before the true birth of a new art form. We anxiously await a similar creative leap for multimedia and CD-ROMS. Every educational establishment should be able to produce its own series of CD-ROMS thanks to new digital equipment. To do so it will be necessary to create interdisciplinary work groups, and thus the task of designing multimedia instruments will become one of the most interesting activities in digital education.
