Multimedia technologies in education.
In general multimedia is the combination of visual and audio representations. These representations could include elements of texts, graphic arts, sound, animation, and video. However, multimedia is restricted in such systems where information is digitalized and is processed by a computer. Interactive multimedia and hypermedia consist of multimedia applications that the user has more active role. Education is perhaps the most useful destination for multimedia and the place where multimedia has the most effective applications, as it enriches the learning process. Multimedia both in nursing education and in medical informatics education has several applications as well. A multimedia project can be developed even as a "stand alone" application (on CD-ROM), or on World Wide Web pages on Internet. However several technical constraints exist for developing multimedia applications on Internet. For developing multimedia projects we need hardware and software, talent and skill. The software requirements for multimedia development consist of one or more authoring systems and various editing applications for text, images, sounds and video. In this chapter different software tools for creating multimedia applications are presented. In the last part of this chapter, two examples of multimedia educational training programs are discussed. Both are "stand alone" applications (CD-ROMs). The first, examines several aspects of the electronic patient record by using videos, audio descriptions, lectures and glossary, while the second one presents several topics regarding epidemiology and epidemiological research by using graphics, sound and animation.
Liaskos
Joseph
J
University of Athens, Faculty of Nursing, Lab. of Health Informatics, Goudi, Greece. iliaskos@nurs.uoa.gr
Diomidus
Marianna
M
D016251:CD-ROM; D004506:Education, Nursing; D004813:Epidemiology / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000193:education*; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D019212:Multimedia; D012984:Software