Getting to grips with "interactivity": Helping teachers assess the educational value of CD-ROMs

Abstract

Many commercial CD-ROMs are now being marketed as suitable for home and school use, increasingly promoted as covering the National Curriculum. However, such promises are failing to be realised because many CD-ROMS are poorly constructed, consisting simply of a mishmash of images, sounds and video that offer little more than light entertainment. The aim of this paper is to provide guidance on assessing the added value of educational CD-ROMs compared with traditional materials by explicating more the notion of interactivity as it pertains to learning.