The World as Multimedia Village

Have you noticed that the Internet is changing the world into a multimedia village? Information--the raw material of knowledge--is roaring in over the Internet--all in virtual time, virtual color, virtual sound, virtual animation, and virtual video. It pours in from California, Australia, Russia. From everywhere.

The world will soon become a multimedia village when students routinely use the Internet to arrange and download a real-time interview with an Australian who knows firsthand the lives of kangaroos. Or to download a tour of a California habitat of sea otters or take a guided real-time walk through a Russian school.

Today's students have an easier time understanding the world-as-multimedia-village than most of their parents and teachers do. After all, they have lived with multimedia from toddler time, observing it on TV while sitting in their highchairs munching on tuna fish sandwiches and bananas. Glimmering images and resonant sounds are as much the stuff of their basic source of knowledge as text was to most of us. They are already using these when they research the rich...