Helping to keep history relevant : mulitmedia and authentic learning

The subject based curriculum attracts lively debate in many countries being accused of fragmenting teaching and learning, erecting artificial barriers and failing to teach the skills required in the twenty first century (Hazlewood 2005). Cross-curricular rich tasks are increasingly seen as the means to develop relevant knowledge, understanding and skills. Over the past fourteen years we have developed and evaluated a series of interactive multi-media resources for primary and secondary schools on themes within Scottish History. The generally positive evaluation given to these resources by pupils and teachers points to some ways in which subjects such as history can remain challenging and relevant. The relevance has largely stemmed, in the case of the multi-media resources, from combining the historian's traditional role of problemising the past, with a wide range of primary and secondary sources, new technologies and learning tasks encompassing critical skills/authentic learning. Consequently, we argue that subjects must in future embrace new technologies and authentic learning to maintain their place in the school curriculum

Use of electronic information services in the library of King Abdulaziz University

The aim of this study was to investigate the satisfaction of academic staff users with the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) and Compact Disk Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) services in the central library of King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, S.A., to investigate the existing status of the card catalogue, to identify the problems and difficulties being faced by academic staff, and to suggest ways and means for developing electronic technology in the library. The literature review survey on OPACs is presented as an overview using OPAC and what difficulties and problems occur when the system is used. Also, the survey represented OPAC user needs and the degree of satisfaction for users with OPAC. The third chapter studies the electronic information services in Saudi Arabia and how these services have developed generally in Saudi Arabia and particularly in King Abdulaziz University Library. Also this chapter concentrates on the important relevant institutions and how the leaders are in this field. From the results of the questionnaire survey it is seen that younger staff and more recent graduates used OPAC considerably more than older staff. Only about one third of staff used CD-ROM and about half OPAC, and of the latter most also need the card catalogue. An attempt has been made to identify the importance of electronic information at the King Abdulaziz University and the difficulties the library has faced in this field, and finally suggestions have been made for overcoming these difficulties