Videoconferencing could become the latest addition to the classroom IT revolution.

A new book, Videoconferencing in Teaching and Learning, launched by the Western Education and Library Board (WELB) highlights the potential of the medium to "enhance the whole education experience".

Videoconferencing is basically interactive television. By means of electronic links, it allows people in two or more locations anywhere in the world to see and talk to one another.

Marie Martin, author of the book and international officer with the WELB, says this offers enormous opportunities to schools, particularly in developing distance learning and connecting learning communities.

"We are living in a visual age," says Martin, "and young children, in particular, are very stimulated by this medium."

Videoconferencing, she says, gives young people, who perhaps have never left the country or travelled far, the "very real experience" of meeting and collaborating with their own peers in other parts of the world.

Martin points out that videoconferencing can also be used effectively between schools in the same geographical area to work on topics of common interest. "Videoconferencing can be pitched for different levels - right up to teacher level," says Martin. Teachers, particularly those in isolated schools, can talk to others through a medium "more real than email".

Martin maintains that the system is relatively inexpensive to set up, easy to use and can be used as part of a whole multi-media approach, firmly rooted in the curriculum.