A verbal pronunciation of the label is offered when the student clicks the mouse again. These books are available in both English and Spanish, so students can read in their native language while being exposed to a second language. Special educators are familiar with the need to create instructional materials or customize materials to meet the varied needs of students with disabilities. Today there are powerful multimedia authoring and presentation tools that educators can use to develop and modify computer-based instructional materials for students with mild disabilities, providing a learning tool that these students can access and use to balance their weak areas of learning with their strong areas. Authoring software allows teachers and students to develop instructional software that can incorporate video, pictures, animation, and text into hypermedia-based instruction.
Multimedia authoring software is very easy to learn and use.
In fact, authoring software packages are even available for young children. For example, if the objective is to teach map reading, an image of a local map can be scanned in and specific locations can be made into buttons that the students can click on, causing a short video clip playing of the familiar location. A set of questions might be asked using both text and synthesized speech to have students give directions on how to get the location shown on the video. Digitized pictures of landmarks could also be incorporated into the directions. These directions, along with the images, could then be printed for use in completing the assignment.