Society and history have become increasingly selective and rigorous, demanding from humankind ever greater personal effort, capability and efficiency. In today's environment, knowledge and knowing how to do represent the difference between success and failure for people, companies and nations. In this context, educational systems face a major responsibility and a serious challenge: to improve the quality of teaching and create a freer and more transparent model of education which facilitates learning. There have been many attempts to introduce multimedia resources into the educational process, yet with limited success. Still, educational applications have taken up a large market share: encyclopdias, CBTs (Computer-Based Training), tutorials, computerized texts and exercises, dictionaries, etc.
TerrAvista Computer Arts -- a Brazilian enterprise -- established in Florianopolis proffers a distinct position regarding this concept, favouring the development of instructional products based on the most up-to-date approaches found in Educational Technology.
Catarina is a powerful and innovative educational resource presented in CD-ROM format. It is fast and couples together scientific rigour with the attractiveness of video games, making it attractive to students. Catarina's interface is both challenging and user-friendly and was ergonomically planned. It permits students to navigate easily through course lessons by means of videos, texts, graphics, audio and animation.
Projected mainly for the teaching of the natural sciences such as chemistry, physics and biology, Catarina's main advantage is to replace traditional segmented static images and graphics with animated sequences, demonstrating processes as they occur in nature. For example, the chemical "pack" is able to show the complete overlap of the d-orbitals with their characteristic spinning movement, while the generation of sigma (s) and pi (p) chemical bonds from s and p orbitals can be controlled step by step or in a whole context. The biological "pack" shows the mitosis and meiosis processes as whole and unique, avoiding the conventional frame-by-frame scheme which is the only option in static pictures as in books. The software also allows students to interact with the experience or demonstration being presented -- like a virtual laboratory where he/she can observe changes frame-by-frame at a specified rate or velocity and even "rewind" the animated sequences and repeat them.
Catarina may be regarded as the third stage of Educational technology, for its fostering of this real-time interaction. The first stage dates back to the first half of this century when the "teaching machine" -- thus dubbed by Skinner -- appeared. The second stage emerged when Saymour Papert introduced the Logo program in personal computers, bringing about a true revolution in this area. The third stage has just begun. It has been inaugurated with this application named Catarina which joins pedagogical content to the personalization of the learning process. It enriches the fundamental topics of each unit of the school programs with text, sound and dynamic animated sequences. It is geared to the satisfaction and participation of the student, thus serving as a positive reinforcement and promoting the continuation of studies.
Luiz Carlos Lopes Manhaes, PhD - EED CED 9283
email: manhaes@mbox1.ufsc.br
Dr. Manhaes is the creator of Catarina and the creative director of TerrAvista Computer Arts.
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URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/catar61.htm
March, 1996
GLOSAS NEWS was orinally posted to the WWW at URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/cont.htm by Tina Evans Greenwood, Library Instruction Coordinator, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado 81301, e-mail: greenwood_t@fortlewis.edu, and last updated May 7, 1999. By her permission the whole Website has been archived here at the University of Tennessee server directory of GLOSAS Chair Dr. Takeshi Utsumi from July 10, 2000 by Steve McCarty in Japan.