INTRODUCTION
Currently, the field of New Media, including its interactive variants, is characterized by a growing usage of film-like modes of presentation. This trend is partly motivated by a number of technological developments which enable the production, storage, dissemination and usage of dynamic audiovisual materials with reasonable effort and at low cost.
THE AVD PROJECT: AUDIO-VISUAL SERVICES FOR CLASSROOM TEACHING
AVD stands for “AudioVisuelle Dienste” which translates “audiovisual services”. It is a nationwide project funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education Science and Culture (bm:bwk) and Austrian telecom. Basically, it comprises of a network of tools and services, by which digitalized educational movies are produced, stored in a searchable database, delivered via Internet and satellite, and flexibly integrated into classroom education in an interactive manner.
The AVD project consists of three main components:
- AV media: A web-based database which contains about 400 professional educational movies in digitahzed form. The videos cover a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from physics to geography, and also address different age groups of students. The database possesses a range of features which allow for a very flexible use, including extended searching possibilities, detailed content description as well as the possibility to preview the videos and to order them for classroom usage.
- AV academy: A learning platform by which video-based live lectures may be attended to via the Internet in an interactive fashion. The live lectures are recorded and stored in a second database with characteristics comparable to the aforementioned one. Again, these “electures” may be searched, previewed and ordered in a largely selfregulated manner.
CONCLUSIONS
Educational movies, at least in their traditional forms, face a number of barriers which have hindered their widespread and regular use in the classroom. These barriers include the complicated and laborious process of finding and obtaining appropriate videos material, the difficulties of utilizing videos in more student-oriented and self-regulated instructional scenarios as well as the tendency of the students to view videos in a rather passive manner without deeper” cognitive processing.
