Creative connection between multimedia, simulation and software development tools in the design and development of biomedical educational simulators

摘要

Creation of modern educational software represents a challenging and complicated project, requiring team cooperation of various professionals. To keep the whole interdisciplinary design cycle fast and efficient, it is necessary to use specialized development tools with sufficient technical support at every stage of the design. The authors present their way of designing multimedia biomedical educational software with simulation games. Simulation models, created using simulation development tools - Matlab/Simulink from MathWorks, are decomposed to interconnected simulation chips suitable for interdisciplinary cooperation between physiologists and programmers during design-time. Interactive graphical components utilize animation software tools - Flash and Director from Macromedia. The user interfaces of the simulators are implemented in Control Web from Moravian Instruments (the Control Web environment was primarily intended to develop industrial control and visualization applications), all is integrated by Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. It seems, the time of only small groups of educational software enthusiasts is coming to a close. The authoring of multimedia educational programs is getting closer to an industrial procedure. Working with many clever intercommunicating tools and keeping industry standards can further promote the authors' creativity and productivity.