As reported in Europhysics News 28/1 - 1997, the Multimedia Workshop 1996 (Munchen 11-13 November) was the first step to unite research efforts in Europe on this subject and to create the "Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning" European Group.

The second European Workshop was organized at the University of Pavia (Italy) 8 through on 10 September 1997, with the following aims:
- to learn about the activity, carried out by each research group, after
the Munchen meeting;
- to exchange ideas, experience, international news;
- to describe a pattern of what is going on in Europe such as different approaches, operating conditions, diffusion of multimedia tools, social acceptance, teachers' reactions etc.;
- to enlarge the European Group (involved in multimedia in physics teaching and learning) and to establish a tradition of working together and to continue actions for a synergistic co-operation.

The Workshop (see the program on the Internet address http://www.physik.uni-kl.de/w_jodl/mmeuro.html), after presentations on recent work carried out on multimedia, proceeded with discussions on the topics:
- "Teaching physics by multimedia in schools and at University"
- "www in the teaching of physics".
Initially, attention was focused on:
- ways to implement (or include) experiments in multimedia and the roles played by experiments and simulations in physics learning;
- problems created by the large amount of information available via net and its quality (how to filter and how to manage the need of refereeing);
- educational/disciplinary areas in which multimedia can offer new solutions and better quality materials.

Then, it was stressed that the educational value of materials on the web can be seriously limited if students are not helped to look at the information with a critical eye and to discern the good from the bad in different sources. Students should be guided to learn how to effectively explore the "multimedia world", to reflect and interiorise the good information for their disciplinary and cultural enhancement. Experiences in which each student acted as a referee for material available on www have suggested.

The problem of teachers' preparation in using multimedia and www was analysed and it was recognised that, particularly in the field of teacher training, new possibilities of building synergistic interaction between different, integrated environments could be offered such as resources on disciplinary topics, history and epistemology, and indications on tools for classroom work etc.

It was recognised that very good materials exist which could form the basis of a library of digitised videos open to consultation and usage in real time. This hypothesis, of course, poses questions of hardware, telephone costs etc. Taking into account the fact that sometimes sites are not reachable for a variety of reasons (too much traffic on the net or computers temporarily shut down) it becomes increasingly difficult to use interactive materials directly while connected: materials should be downloaded and used off-line.

The discussion offered the opportunity to confront ideas about exchanging information on multimedia products, refereeing multimedia products, creating valid homepages, web sites, software packages.

Good and bad examples of www sites were considered and the need of developing evaluation criteria was recognised. It was decided to reflect, in particular, on evaluation criteria of web sites, starting from the work presented by the research group of the University of Torino (Italy), and to discuss, by e-mail, proposals of additional criteria.

Finally, future plans and possible actions both on national and European scale were discussed. In particular, the different possibilities for the structure and the place of the Multimedia Workshop 1998 were analysed.

After the meeting it was decided that the third European workshop will be held in Lille, France (September 28 (Mo) - 29 (Tue) 1998) organised by Monique Vindevoghel (Monique.Vindevoghel@iemn.univ-lille1.fr). On german national level there will be a third Arbeitskreis Multimedia in Kiel, Germany (June 11-13, 1998) organised by M. Euler (euler@ipn.uni-kiel.de).

H. J. Jodl
Fachbereich Physik
Universität Kaiserslautern
Germany

FAX: (49)-631-205-3677
e-mail: jodl@physik.uni-kl.de
URL: http://www.physik.uni-kl.de/w_jodl/w_jodl.html