"If I only had a computer with a CD-ROM, I could learn better faster." This is the current perception of many students who blame the lack of technology available to them as the key problem in their education. Let's assume a magic genie grants every student a CD-ROM player with supercomputing capabilities. Now what? The next, more challenging step is finding out how computer technology affects learning and instruction. Originally, the computer was seen as an infinitely replicable substitute for real teachers, later as the determining skill of the future required for economic advancement, and now as the broadcast vehicle of multimedia. Brian Harvey (see A Limiting Technology) has taken the stance that this may turn out to be an empty promise, like many other promises made by new educational technologies over the yearsÑfrom slide projectors to VCRs. With his basic premise, we agree: technology does not make bad teaching good. All the computers in the world will not make drill and practice more intellectually stimulating. However, it does add an important tool to the teacher's (and the student's) toolbox. Moreover, this latest generation of technology gives us a chance to right some of the wrongs of past technologies.

First, let's state the obvious; the more ways available to present information, the better. Multimedia, by definition, is the combination of different media, like sound, video, text, or images. With computer- based multimedia, we unlock the prior constraints of text alone on the computer. And indeed, some of the finest multimedia applications excel on this point alone. Voyager's Mozart CD-ROM combines critical analyses, definitions, historical background, and exercises with the sounds they refer to. Not the score, but the music itself, is co-presented with texts that describe it. Compare this to the old way of doing things: juggling printed scores, critiques, and recordings, constantly searching for passages or themes discussed in various books, while trying to verify what you're hearing is what they're discussing by following the score as well. No novel educational theory is embodied in the software; indeed, it contains multiple-choice questions reminiscent of the Votrax Harvey mentions. But because it integrates the pieces and makes information accessible in different ways, multimedia is an improvement.

And computer-based multimedia can be better since media may be truly integrated Teaching materials including audio cassettes, text references, photographs, personal letters, maps, and videotapes can be combined and carried on a single disc. For instance, the "Voices of the 30s" CD-ROM is a compilation of materials about the Great Depression originally collected by a school teacher and librarian, Pat Hanlon and Bob Campbell. The multimedia repackaging of their teaching materials didn't change their teaching philosophy, but eliminated the annoyances of carrying and coordinating several pieces of AV equipment. In general, instructors could create their own multimedia teaching materials from scratch, but current technology makes this difficult and expensive venture, as Harvey concurs.

Does this benefit outweigh potential disadvantages? Will multimedia help students and teachers develop deep conceptual understanding, or will it produce a generation of jaded couch potatoes waiting for infotainment? This depends on several key factors. Foremost among these is control; who controls the medium?

Television is passive, few-to-many communication where the few are entrusted to an enormous degree with creation of viewpoints. The people who control mass media like television or major newspapers are people with expensive equipment, large professional staffs, and regulatory approval. The only incentive to run such a gauntlet is large profit, which comes from advertisers. They in turn join the media-control bandwagon.

Multimedia can be similarly inaccessible, but this is rapidly changing. Key technologies including video cameras, multimedia-capable computers, and audio digitizers are now within the financial grasp of many schools. Television broadcasting is still out of reach for the average school, but video development and multimedia composition are not. The Bell High School, a public school in East Los Angeles, provides a fine example in which students develop near professional quality videos as part of a class; Brian Reilly has collected and coalesced these videos as a computer-based multimedia project, which showcases students' projects and students' points of view. Students and teachers can have control of multimedia production. Multimedia is putting the power of creation into the hands of the viewer.

"But do the students learn anything from building multimedia presentations?" one might ask. Indeed, Harvey suggests these students are trading in playing with cameras for text-based literacy. Our belief is that the quality of the educational experience with a medium depends on the quality of activities performed with that medium. Any medium requires literacy. We have book literacy, in which we understand typical genres (essay, novel, etc.) and literary devices (metaphor, sarcasm, etc). We also have video literacy with current genres including news program, debate, game show, sitcom, etc. and cinematographic devices. The point is that we create literacy for each medium ourselves, as a culture. We invented the newspaper, and we also invented the grocery store tabloid. What elevates or debases is not generally the problem of the medium, but of the society that creates it.

Once one has created a "document" in a medium, how can one share it? Another key characteristic of media is reproducibility. Print is a very democratic medium in the age of photocopiers because it is easy to create and share with others. Copier and printer technology are so widespread that nearly anyone can be a "desktop publisher". We envision a similar set of circumstances now that computer-based multimedia is available. Unlike film and images that are difficult for the average person to reproduce and distribute, digitized images and sound can be easily copied, or even transmitted over networks. This has a great potential to enhance education, since students can share their work with each other and with outsiders. By opening the door to communicating and sharing with people outside the school walls, students may actually be able to participate in real activities and not just contrived exercises. For example, in Roy Pea's CoVis project at Northwestern, a collaboration between scientists and elementary school kids through networked multimedia has allowed students to use real weather satellite images of meteorologists, and engage in scientific inquiry and group discussion with real experts. Again, the media itself will not change bad habits of the past; if students are not allowed to share with other people either because of classroom practice or legal issues of media ownership, or if sharing is trivialized to video note-passing, nothing will come of it. But the possibility for exciting interactions between schools and the rest of society remains.

The promise that multimedia holds for change rests ultimately on how the technology is shaped and used. To the extent that multimedia becomes an accessible, transmittable, and democratic medium, it can have a positive impact on schools.

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