The multimedia revolution is truly upon us. Everywhere we look there are digital cameras, videos and mobile phones that can take still and moving pictures. This revolution provides a challenge for us as teachers as we try to immerse our students within this world and upgrade our already extensive skills sets.

Previously we have used HyperStudio with students when they have created multimedia presentations but have found that lately it has become a little crash prone. HyperStudio, while an extremely good program also takes a little while to learn so we went on the hunt to find a simple to use yet powerful multimedia creation program that would be suitable for classroom use. Enter eZediaMX.

eZediaMX is a drag and drop, east to use, cross platform multimedia creation program. You can drag and drop digital media and images from your hard drive, a CD-ROM or even a web site into eZediaMX.

To see how easy the program is to use we asked Miss 7 year old tester to give the program a run. She started the program and added a background from the extensive resources that come with the program. Opening another Object Well (ezedia's name for resources) she dragged a movie onto her project. Next she added a button and positioned it. Then she clicked the link button and dragged a link from the button to the movie and previewed her work. When she clicked on the button the movie played. She went back to project and decided to add some text, controls to her movie, rename her button and add another button to go to the next fame of her project. Sounds simple doesn't it?

Master 11 had a go and found it easy to animate movies, text or graphics to a path or even create frame by frame animation.

eZediaMX also allows you to record and add your own voice to a project as well as having text-to-speech capabilities.

Teachers are sure to like the program's ability to create interactive quizzes and tests with the click of a couple of mouse buttons.

Another nice feature of the program is the ability to mask media with text, graphics and movies to combine properties and create customised visuals. Add to this full graphic transparency capability, anti-aliased smooth text, QuickTime effects, transitions, true layering and real time compositing and the program is certainly a winner in our book.

eZediaMX comes with over 200 Object Wells filled with resources from eZedia, Animation Factory and Videometry.

We also found the showcase and tutorials that came with the program extremely helpful and enabled us to take the use of this program to the next level.

Another useful point of reference for those who are investigating the program is the company's extensive web site. It contains additional resources and tutorials as well as showcasing ezediaMX's capabilities.

The only downside to this program is the price and licensing structure, which isn't really that expensive for this type of program, but could be beyond the price range of a number of schools.

In our humble opinion this is a program that the Department should seriously be investigating to provide a state-wide license for all schools so they can use this outstanding product within the classroom.

Software supplied by Edsoft and eZedia. Software reviewed by Rosemary McDowall and Bill Gillespie. Rosemary and Bill can be contacted at computer_corner2000@yahoo.com