Abstract— This paper presents the current situation regarding multimedia education in primary schools in Croatia. It specifically concentrates on teachers in primary schools and their mission in informatics and multimedia literacy education. The new technology and multimedia environment put forward new requirements to teachers: they are expected to become lifelong learners, but also to be informational, multimedia and IT literate. The motivation and satisfaction of elementary school teachers in Croatia related to multimedia literacy education is analyzed and revealed in this paper. Also, our comparative statistical analysis showed that there is a significant correlation between results students achieve in the multimedia literacy test and the teacher’s use of multimedia teaching materials in the classroom. Keywords—Croatia, multimedia education, multimedia literacy, multimedia materials, primary school, teachers I. INTRODUCTION he modern educational process can hardly be imagined without the use of instructional media, which make an important and indispensable part of modern reality. The media are evolving rapidly and open up many new horizons in education and upbringing. The bases for the development of the 20th century education were textual media that are still used in schools on a daily basis (e.g. textbooks and manuals, workbooks and sheets, school exams, etc.). However, the presentation of educational content in the form of text or oral presentation greatly demotivates today’s students from learning and creates difficulties in attracting students to learn and keeping their attention. But, if the school's curriculum combines multiple instructional media (text, sound, video and images), it is possible to attract students’ attention and deepen their learning experience, as well as to create opportunities to form associations between different representations of educational content. Therefore, it is a priority of each educational institution to introduce and use a variety of instructional media in the Danijela Unić is a lecturer and librarian at VERN’ University of Applied Sciences in Zagreb, Croatia (danijela.unic@vern.hr). Nives Mikelić Preradović is an assistant professor at the Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia (nmikelic@ffzg.hr) K. Posavec is a PhD student at the Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia (kristina.posavec@gmail.com) classroom as a tool for learning, enrichment of the classes and student’s advancement. The recent research on use [1] of multimedia instructional tools, as well as the research on impact of multimedia materials [2] emphasizes the importance of this topic. For example, the use and advantages of interactive whiteboards have been examined in elementary schools all over the world, such as in United Kingdom [3], Taiwan [4] and Chech Republic [5]. Also, the effect of interactive e-books on learners has been studied, exploring new reading patterns to provide recommendations for the interaction of teaching and learning in this new era [6]. Apart from the impact of multimedia on the students and educational process, recent studies also investigate the level of IT competency of teachers in schools [7] and the use of ICT by teachers at primary schools according to age, duration of pedagogical practice and their education in the ICT area [8]. Finally, influence of multimedia to education is intensively studied in the last two decades. Since learner's cognitive resources interact with aspects of the external environment, the design of the educational process needs to embed the use of complex media [9]. In Croatia, didactic rules for the selection of instructional media in elementary school were already given by Matijević [10]. He emphasized that in the early years of schooling the advantage should be given to learning in the real word. He also points out that the multimedia CD-ROM or the Internet as a source of knowledge should serve as a supplement to learning, but should never become the primary or main teaching medium. Children in the early years of schooling do not need to avoid the use of computers, whether browsing software on CD-ROM or searching the Internet, but one should also not expect the equipment of all school classrooms with computers or encouragement of prolonged sitting in front of the computer during the school day. Finally, according to Matijević [10], it is more useful to think about new educational solutions for children who will live at the beginning of the third millennium, rather than pushing the Internet and multimedia in the framework of the existing rigid curriculum, which already in advance limits the communication capabilities. Media competencies are an important part of the modern school curriculum. It does not affect the change in the educational role of schools, but it implies a new paradigm. The use of new media opens up new opportunities that may be Multimedia as a Didactic Tool for Teachers in Elementary Education in Croatia Danijela Unić, Nives Mikelić Preradović, Kristina Posavec T INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES Volume 8, 2014 ISSN: 2074-1316 67