Kids carry lot of books to school everyday. They spend much of their time with books. But the bitter truth is "Books are really boring now a days". Ask yourself "what was the last book you read? and when was it?". Hope you get what I'm trying to say. Reading books needs lots of attention. And if its kids, they have zero tolerance, and there is no guarantee that they will understand exactly, what the author want to say. They left with no choice other then depending on their teachers. If the teacher didn't explain well, they will start hating the subject itself.
They have all right to choose what they want to read. But they should not drop something because they don't understand.
What's happening while we read?
While we read books, lot of visualization happen in your brain, our brain will align the things we are reading in a proper fashion. It will try to interlink the things by asking lot of questions and doubts. If everything answered we will understanding what we are reading. The whole process needs lot of patients. If the book is not written properly, visualization won't happen. kids are too impatient, they will simply break it, if they don't get it. and we can't blame them because we even behaved the same, when we were kids. We have to find some solution for them. We are in need of alternative learning methods. Multimedia learning is the best solution for them.
What multimedia can do?
Multimedia reduce the effort required for visualization. It will show the things exactly how it has to be visualized. Our brain can simply catch up the visualization and understand the things.
- Eyes : Visual
- Ears : Sound (voice, music)
- Nose : Smell
- Hand or Body : Touch and feel
Multimedia make use of all these channels. 3D and 2D animation minimize the effort need to visualize for understanding. Sound grab the attention, Interactivity keep the viewer engaged. The conventional book can't do this. Kids are so much attracted towards animation. My 4 year Nephew always watch cartoon channel's sitting very close to the TV. My sister use to scold him. But i was thinking "Why to scold him?, he is not doing anyhting wrong, he is doing something which he enjoys" The good part it shows is "he can be attentive" its shows "he can get engage with something which he like". That's a good sign and that's where we have to really work upon.
Companies in action
So many companies already started on creating multimedia course's. Pearson creates Multimedia Teaching Aids for schools. The CD will have images, videos and interactive applets which the teacher for teaching. Edurite creates multimedia course for CBSC and Karnataka syllabus. CD cost is around 2400 bugs. Its a flash based course So a computer is need to view it.
A mumbai based company Average2Excellence is also doing similar kind of work. The create flash based multimedia course for CBSC students. Though the graphic quality of Edurite module is much better than average2excellence(A2E) course, I like the A2E course content flow. The modules are so elaborate and everything is explained in depth. I will discuss about the course production in a different post. As of now yes there are some companies already get their foot into the ground. Few companies reached significant level of success too. We are very near to the future.