The Multi-Media Detectives Project is a multimedia and telecommunications research effort involving schools in Haslett, Okemos, and East Lansing Public Schools. Teachers would also like to see their students' web pages feature hypertext and media links to wetlands resources pulled from remote libraries, laboratories, and other research locations around the globe. To help the students become more competent as web explorers we have begun using two-way cable TV as a control and viewing mechanism. The ChannelWorks box is attached to an IBM PC via an internal LANtastic Ethernet card and a standard Ethernet cable. The most remarkable benefit of this set-up is speed.
Students are able to see the web research pages on their classroom TVs.
To change the direction of exploration on the World Wide Web students just talk into their camera microphone, and their voices come out loud and clear in the Multi-Media Classrooms studio. The magic highway which can take us around the globe or even into outer space is, of course, the World Wide Web. In the books the Magic Schoolbus is driven by the students' teacher, the zany Ms. Frizzle. And, like Ms. Frizzle in the books, I take requests from the students and drive the bus to research sites to help the students find answers to their science questions. It is offering an affordable opportunity to explore the near future right now.