Kids are aces in this department. They will take the responsibility for acquiring the multimedia equipment, hooking it together, maintaining it, and preventing it from being broken or stolen. The kids are the starship's technicians and producers. The teacher's job is to tap the students' complex cluster of visual, auditory, and three-dimensional literacies that they have developed as a result of hundreds of hours of exposure to electronic media. Now the teacher can enlist the kids' powerfully honed multimedia literacy in a quest to learn language.
Language is still their primary tool for thought, communication, entertainment, and employment.
A multimedia center, impro- vised from equipment found in the school building, can be the starship that carries students on breathtaking voyages of discovery, and is propelled by students' endless fascination with all things electronic. Your ship is waiting to be launched. Your crew stands poised for the first adventure. All they need is a captain and a flight plan into new worlds of knowledge that only a good teacher can imagine. The Author Fred D'Ignazio is the author of more than 20 books for children and adults and is a monthly columnist for The Computing Teacher.