GETTING INTERACTIVE MEDIA INTO SCHOOLS Experiences from a Pilot Project in Austria

The introduction of new types of audiovisuals streaming videos, hypervideos, and video-based E-Lectures – into classroom was addressed in a nationwide Austrian school project, in which a large number of digitized audiovisual media were provided. The aim of the project was to create an internet-based platform which allows teachers to access a large database of digitized educational movies, equip it with convenient tools for searching, ordering and downloading, and gain some empirical insights in its acceptance by teachers and students, its feasability for classroom teaching, and its appropriate instructional scenarios. Details of the project and its empirical evaluation are described in this paper. The main part of the article is devoted to a discussion of three conceptual issues whose relevance can be deduced from theoretical grounds and which also have been found important in the empirical evaluation of the project. Finally, some general considerations about the educational future of audiovisual media will be made.