Why use animations and simulations?
What can you do with new multimedia tools, such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Macromedia Director, that you aren’t doing in your lectures already? What enhancements to learning can you make with these new presentation methods? Animations and simulations come to mind. Animations and simulations have the potential of being more efficient and effective ways of getting students to form useful mental models, by combining several topics in a unifying package. Perhaps by combining topics together that are usually covered separately into an animation, time is spent more effectively on the combined topics. They are more intimately related to each other. Relationships are easier to see. It is generally recognized that the more senses that are engaged and the more interactive the learning, the better the material is understood and retained.
