In-House Multimedia Teaching Materials Development

The purpose of this paper is to promote CALL and in-house multimedia development at educational institutions, so that more language teachers can make teaching materials suitable for their classes. In the first half of this paper some multimedia teaching materials made with the help of authoring software such as HyperCard and Oracle Media Objects are introduced and classified into seven main types as follows: - CAI drills (traditional cloze tests performed on a computer), - Vocabulary learning programs with pictures and sound, - Dialogs with sound and/or movies, - Programs for reading exercises, - An on-line glossary, - Virtual Physical Response with mouse (Total Physical Response realized on a computer), - Other games. For each type the development know-how and technical difficulties are delineated, especially from the viewpoint of hands-on development within educational institutions. Some core programming scripts are also added as an appendix along with brief explanations. In the second half of this paper I propose the following six practical measures for promoting CALL and in-house multimedia development. They are all easy to realize and require minimal financial expenditures. - Developing and offering so-called "general format programs". This expression refers to the customisable multimedia titles whose data are easy to change by each user; - A CALL training course for graduate students and young teachers as part of faculty development activities in the university; - Mutual offering of freeware multimedia titles per WWW; - Opening the know-how and programming scripts to the public; - Developing a data-base of copyright-free sound and pictures for nonprofit educational purposes; - Opportunity for continuous discussing and exchanging of information among CALL specialists, e.g. a CALL mailing list