Designing Interactive Multimedia Software for Schools; Possibilities and Constraints

Biographical Notes
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David Spaidal is the Managing Director and one of the founders of Discover History LLC. David attended Middlebury College earning a BA in synthetic organic chemistry and is a Sloan Fellow at London Business School where he received his MSc. in Management. In the intervening period David was a member of the United States Ski Team and competed around the world. Having visited many historic sites around the world he was struck by the absence of educational multimedia software about these places, leading him to create Discover History LLC to fill this void.

Abstract

Designing multimedia software for classroom use involves making choices and compromises, between what is technically possible, and what is both practical and useful in the real world. Designers must take into account what they could do in an ideal world and balance that against the constraints of the real world. In the ideal world, the development budget for the software is unlimited. In the ideal world every classroom is fully equipped with the latest multimedia hardware - every student has a networked PC, there is a large screen projector and networked whiteboards for teachers to use, and every teacher has been given enough training and technical support to use all of this equipment without having its technical operation interfere with the teaching process.

In the real world, development budgets are tight. In the real world, equipment available for students and teachers varies significantly, as does the amount of training and technical support available. Is it possible to design multimedia applications which are useful to teachers but affordable and easy to use? This session will present the way Discover History LLC designs its software. We will discuss specific factors which go into design decisions and invite discussion about how, and in what ways, this process will or should develop as technology advances.