ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF MULTIMEDIA
ADVANTAGES
The pedagogical strength of multimedia is that it uses
the natural informationprocessing abilities that we already possess as humans. Our eyes and ears, in conjunction with our brain, form a formidable system for transforming meaningless sense data into information. The old saying that "a picture is worth a thousand words" often understates the case especially with regard to moving images, as our eyes are highly adapted by evolution to detecting and interpreting movement. |
DISADVANTAGES
Multimedia requires high-end computer systems.
Sound, images, animation, and especially video, constitute large amounts of data, which slow down, or may not even fit in a low-end computer. Unlike simple text files created in word processing, multimedia packages require good quality computers. A major disadvantage of writing multimedia course ware is that it may not be accessible to a large section of its intended users if they do not have access to multimedia-capable machines. For this reason, course ware developers should think very carefully about the type of multimedia elements that need to be incorporated into applications and include only those that have significant value. |