Rapsody : a Self / Collaborative - Learning Internet Mul Timedia Based Teacher Training Distance Support Model

With the rapid development of information technolog y (IT) and the Internet growth, it is widely accept ed that computer and information communication literacy has become e xtremely important, and will play a major part in e veryone's lives in the future. In order to teach the next generations computer litera cy, it is first necessary to train our teachers. In Japan a new teachers' education framework is being built, to enhance the teachers' teaching skills and information literacy, with spec ial focus on Internet and Multimedia. Our research belongs to this new research direction. The purpose of this study is to propose and develop a distance educational model, as a school-based curriculum development and training-s ystem. In this environment, a teacher can learn via an Internet-based self-training system about subject contents, modern teaching know-how, and students' learning activities evaluation m ethods, about the new subject called " Information ". We call our system RAPSODY: R emote and A daPtive educational S ystem O ffering a DY namic communicative environment. In this paper, we describe the structur e, functions and mechanism of our distance educatio nal model and then discuss the educational meaning of this model within the new le arning ecology, based on multi-modality and new lea rning situations and forms. Finally, we perform some tests and evaluation and s how our current results. 1. INTRODUCTION Therapiddevelopmentsofinformationnand communication technologies influence many fields. In education, various new teaching subjects and methods using the Internet and Multimedia technologies [7] are being introduced all over the world, and inn Japann inn particular. Manyofthesemethodsemphasizetheaspectof computer-supported collaborative communication betwe en students and teacher during interactive teaching/learning activities. Therefore, now-a-days it is extremely imp ortant for a teacher to acquire computer communicationn liter acy [10]. So far, there were many system development stud ies, whichh aim at fostering and expanding the teachers' practic al abilities and comprehensive teaching skills, by using the products of the new technologies, such as computers, communicationn satellites suchh as SCS (Space Collaborat ion System) are developed and used as distance education systems between Japanese national universities. In the near future, a teacher's role will change from text based teaching, to facilitating, advising, consulting, and his/her role wi ll be more that of a designer of the learning environment. This phenomenonn is also called the transitionn from the teacher as the "sage onn the stage" to the "guide onn the side" …