I started teaching Multimedia class today. I am using Li and Drew book on Multimedia as the text book and will use Steinmetz and Nahrstadt as a reference book. These books are not bad, but they are not real text books also. It is surprising that there is no good text book on this topic.
There is a panel on this topic — multimedia education — at ACM MM2008 in Vancouver next month. I am on this panel. So I can raise the issue of the text book once again. What we really need is a book that is more than a collection of techniques on different aspects. A unifying approach that shows why multimedia is different from collection of techniques in disparate mono-media systems is essential to really make progress in understanding why multimedia is so appealing to most humans — in fact to all.