"Imagine a school with children that can read or write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live." Peter Cochrane.

In this section, we propose examples of how JavaScript can be used to increase interactivity in web-based presentations (Lange, 1999; see below). As will be apparent from the links associated with the various examples as well as from the resource section that covers a larger set of WWW authoring techniques (JavaScript, Java, CGI, etc.), this list of ideas is certainly not exhaustive; it merely represents some of the techniques that can be used for educational purpose and indicates ways in which they can be applied.

An introduction to these demonstrations as well as an introduction to JavaScript basics will be found in:

Lange, M. (1999). Museum of Perception and Cognition Website: Using JavaScript to Increase Interactivity in Web-based Presentations. Behavior Research, Methods, Instruments & Computers, Special issue on Teaching Demonstrations and Tutorials, In press (February 1999). (Abstract).

These informations will not be reproduced here. Hence, the purpose of this section is not to propose an introduction to JavaScript. High quality tutorials that can already be found on the net (see resource section), or in books. The idea behind these documents is rather to provide teachers with scripts they can easily adapt to their own needs thanks to JavaScript simplicity to learn and ease of use. In this respect, a special effort is made to guide the user through the code that implements these examples. A "view source" button has been attached to each example. Pressing on it will cause the display of two files, the source code and an HTML document that proposes a step by step explanation of the JavaScript code.

These routines all relate to more engaging, interactive, and effective web-based presentation of course materials. Some of them can be discovered in our museum website. We strongly recommend you to visit the Integral French version of the Museum of Perception and Cognition website or its abridged English version). You will discover other interactive features such as Java based experimental demonstrations (Stroop, Sperling, Garner, Shepard).

For your facility, a package containing the different web documents associated with the examples can be downloaded below.

 

	Download a package containing all the examples
	JavaScripts programs
	Java programs (not yet accessible)