The Reading Disc: Learning to Read Using Interactive CD

SUMMARY

For the past eighteen months, Cambridge Training and Development (CTAD) in association with Next Technology, the Cambridge based production firm, have been developing an interactive compact disc on CD‐ROM XA to help adults learn to read. The disc runs on IBM‐compatibles with certain upgrades and combines all the elements of multimedia (photographs, text, sound, computer graphics and motion video) in about 200 hours of learning material. The project is now in its pilot phase, with discs being used in adult learning centres and libraries up and down the country; final publication follows at the end of 1991.

The development partnership, between a leading‐edge software company and a materials development organization with considerable experience in learning design, has focused on the application of technology to learning. This paper records some of the main results of the project in both areas, and suggests that a successful integration of technological and pedagogic perspectives is needed in order to harness and direct the power of multimedia to create tools which develop and extend people's abilities to learn.