◆The Voyage of the Mimi, the world's first educational multimedia and its development into Palenque◆

 The Voyage of the Mimi is a multimedia based on an adventure story about research on the behaviors of whales which was created by Bank Street College of Education in the U.S. The Department of Education in the US invited entries for a competition to create a science and mathematics educational multi-media material. In 1981, the college was chosen from among the applicants and in 1984, the material was completed after a 40 month development period, with a subsidy of around 700 million yen. The material, created for students from the fourth grade to the second year of junior high school, was developed in order to be used in schools and is still now widely used. The college aimed to "create science-oriented material" by placing the emphasis on a process of scientific explorations and utilization of scientific methods, not on knowledge cramming. The Voyage of the Mimi, a package which combines various educational media effectively, was put out into the world under a catchphrase, "the world's first authentic educational multimedia." The package mainly consisted of a series of TV dramas, a major medium and other materials including TV documentaries, textbooks, wall charts and computer software (Suzuki, 1997).

 Let's examine the process where analogue multimedia materials developed into digital ones by comparing The Voyage of the Mimi with "Palenque." I would like you to read my paper, prepared in 1997, by accessing the below. The other two papers are advanced materials for reference in Japanese.

Required Readings

• History of Multimedia in Education (Suzuki, 1997: Section 2) / (PDF 8pages, 109KB)
  
  Translated from Schools in the Highly Sophisticated Information Society – Aiming at Establishment of Most Advanced Schools – Kanji Akabori (1997) Gyosei (Chapter 3)

Advanced reference in Japanese

• Structure and significance of The Voyage of the Mimi as educational material (Hiroo Saga, 1995) [In Japanese]
  The paper describes the background of the development and the influence on schools in detail. Whole translations into Japanese of two scenarios and statements of teachers who used it are attached.
  
• Suzuki, K. (1998) "The Voyage of the Mimi in 1998: Searching Web sites." Educational Media Research 5(1), pp.39-50 [In Japanese]
  Research, through investigations on the Web, showing that the material is still used and developed actively even though 15 years have passed since its completion. At present, figures are missing.

Sites for reference

• IMBb users' comments on The Voyage of the Mimi (1984) (broken link)
  It is interesting since some elementary and junior high school students of the time comment that it was awful, etc., and others countered them by illustrating the value of the material for education.
  
• Introduction of products of Bank Street College (only one page) (broken link)
  • http://www.bankstreet.edu/pmg/mimi.html
  • http://www.bankstreetcorner.com/voyages_of_mimi.shtml