Interactive television: Educational use in the new millenium

Interactive television (ITV) has a great deal of potential for facilitating interactive, collaborative, constructivist, situated, and authentic learning. Many teachers, however, are not familiar with the features of ITV, or how it could impact on teaching and learning in Australia. Inherent in its adoption, there are a number of issues which need to be addressed, including the lack of research into current generation ITV, the lack of availability of pedagogically sound, research-driven guidelines for ITV use, and the existing attitudes towards ITV. This paper describes some of the theoretical and practical issues surrounding the use of ITV in the classrooms and concludes with a description of preliminary research.