Teachers can log onto student files, comment on the work in a message window, and even revise or correct the student paper while they are in contact. The program also allows for peer editing with students working with their colleagues. Growing out of this work and the ability to record and distribute digitized sound files on Macintoshes, in 1992 we introduced a second program called LanguageWriter , primarily for the teaching of foreign languages. This program allows teachers to prepare coordinated text and sound instructional materials of their own design. Instructors can record their own digitized sounds, relate the sounds to written text, and save the results in a lesson format.
Students can then later access the lesson, containing both sound and text, on a computer network.
They can select words or phrases and play back the sounds corresponding to their selection. They can record their own voices, compare their speech to the instructor's, or answer questions in written form. It expands the concept of networking as an educational tool by offering the classroom teacher multiple modalities with coordinated text and sound data for personalized lesson development. Current ideas of computer pedagogy stress the success of interactive video. For instance, in foreign languages students can replay segments of real television or videotape on the computer and simultaneously be presented language materials to test mastery of native-speaker dialogues and interactions.