• Game Makers - Allows teachers to create games using their own curricular materials
• Simulations - Illustrates some scientific priciple by duplicating a real life situation or process on the computer screen
• Games & Challeneges - Allows students to practice their knowledge by solving problems on the computer
• Laboratoies - Students take data and answer associated questions using a computer based simulation of the real world
• Demonstrations - A simulation or animation that illustrates a scientific principle for use in front of the entire class

These computer based activities can be used in a number of different ways:

• In front of the classroom with a computer and projector (a Smart Board could also be used, but is not necessary)
• By a student or a few student working on a single computer
• By a class of students working in a computer lab setting

Several Multimedia Science software titles include sets of these multimedia modules. Our experience has shown that these computer based activities work best if they are interspersed along the "instructional timeline" with other types of instructional activities such as lectures, discusions, hands-on activities and labs, and tests. A possible schematic of the instructional timeline, a timeline of the day by day instructional activities in a course, is shown below.