Educational software and multimedia towards a European dimension

Pressed as we are to keep pace with accelerating innovation in educational technology, there is rarely a chance to pause and take stock, but the imminent entry of ten new members to the EU from central and eastern Europe provides a perfect opportunity to reflect about prevailing trends and the state of the art across the continent. Accordingly, we present here a reflection on multimedia materials and educational software and in particular on the wealth of significant resources available within member states, which in our view can and ought to become part of a common European heritage. The importance of multimedia and educational software in European education has been recognised for some time [7]. As 'far' back as 1996, the Educational Multimedia Taskforce (EMTF)1 highlighted the "great potential" which multimedia offers in primary and secondary education and made numerous recommendations on how that potential might best be realised [3]. Much has been done in this direction both at national and European levels. However, further efforts are required before educational multimedia can begin to play the key role that the EMTF attributed to it. We believe that the time is now ripe for those further efforts to be made, thanks in part to the convergence of several favourable factors: o increased (and enlarged) pan-European integration in the cultural, social and economic spheres aided by the introduction of the euro; o the emergence of a corps of pioneer teachers with solid experience in implementing multimedia in their teaching and in collaborating with colleagues at European level; o maturity in national education services providing training and support in multimedia, educational software and overall use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in schools; o the increased scope and importance of the collaborative dimension within multimedia applications themselves. Our reflection is based on the experience we have gained in the field since 1985 [5] when we established Italy's Educational Software Library (BSD), which has since evolved into Essediquadro (Servizio Documentazione Software Didattico )2, an online service providing information and support regarding multimedia and educational software from Italy and abroad.