Multimedia pedagogy and multicultural education for the new millennium

New technologies provide tools to reconstruct education as we begin a new millennium. In particular, multimedia technologies, like CD-ROMS and Web sites, produce new resources and material for expanding education. In examining the Shoah Project-which documents the experiences of survivors of the Holocaust-we demonstrate how it provides important tools for historical and religious education, as well as making the reality of the Holocaust vivid and compelling in the contemporary moment. In this context we discuss how multimedia can provide an important supplement to multicultural education, bringing the experiences of marginal and oppressed groups to the mainstream. Yet we also argue that effective multimedia education requires historical contextualization, the skills of media literacy, and engaging pedagogical presentation in the classroom to make it effective as a supplement to traditional classroom and print-based education. We show how educational technologies, such as those produced by the Shoah Foundation and the UCLA Film and Television Archives, can help reconstruct education for the twenty-first century.