Multimedia Technologies in Education

Multimedia technologies (MMT) are tools that make it possible to transmit information in a very large meaning, transforming them into knowledge through leveraging the learning power of senses in learners and stimulating their cognitive schemes. This kind of transformation can assume several different forms: from digitalized images to virtual reconstructions; from simple text to iper-texts that allow customized, fast, and cheap research within texts; from communications framework like the Web to tools that enhance all our senses, allowing complete educational experiences (Piacente, 2002b). MMT are composed by two great conceptually-different frameworks (Piacente, 2002a): • Technological supports, such as hardware and software: this refers to technological tools such as mother boards, displays, videos, audio tools, databases, communications software and hardware, and so on, that make it possible to transfer contents; • Contents: this refers to information and knowledge transmitted with MMT tools. Information is simply data (such as visiting timetable of museum, cost of tickets, the name of the author of a picture), while knowledge comes from information elaborated in order to get a goal. For instance, a complex iper-text about a work of art, where several pieces of information are connected in a logical discourse, is knowledge. For the same reason, a virtual reconstruction comes from knowledge about the rebuilt facts. Contents can also be video games, as far as they are conceived for educational purposes (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2005; Gros, 2007). It is relevant to underline that to some extent technological supports represent a condition and a limit for contents (Wallace, 1995). In other words, content could be expressed just through technological supports, and this means that content has to be made in order to fit for specific technological support, and that the limits of a specific technological support are also the limits of its content. For instance, the specific architecture of a database represents a limit within which contents have to be recorded and have to be traced. This is also evident when thinking about content as a communicative action: Communication is strictly conditioned by the tool that we are using.