Multimedia Authoring Tools: The Quest for an Educational Package

Since the explosion in multimedia computing, educators have been trying to work their way towards integrated human-computer interaction. Consequently, a large number of multimedia tools have been created, always following the trend of simpler and easier multimedia development. After outlining the transition from hardcore programming to modern multimedia authoring systems, this paper leads the way through a large variety of products, trying to determine the criteria upon which one should base a software investment. To facilitate this attempt, a series of variables is introduced and, based on these variables, a typical evaluation takes place. Following that pattern, each tool is examined separately so that a reasonable amount of data is gathered and treated as the basis for a 5-scale point system. Informal as this may be, it not only helps in ranking the tools examined, but also in extracting the necessary statistics. A black spot on this analysis is the absence of education-related data, since no software package was found to be able to play a clear educational role. As a result to all the above, a top-7 list is presented, always based on the previously stated subjective criteria. The purpose of this work is to shed light on the case of multimedia computing, aiming to find a tool that could serve a purely educational purpose in the field of live presentations. The absence of such a tool is the conclusion of the whole study.