Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

editorial Gestures and Sound Paul C Reed Traditionally NAVA Convention time in mid-summer in Chicago has become the time when audiovisual educators and the audiovisual industry get together and think together about their audiovisual futures. We have a new idea for display at this year's National Audiovisual Convention and Exhibit. It may help define what our problems are in bringing about greater use of audiovisual means of communication. The fact is that countless thousands of teachers and other educators desperately need our help. They are hopelessly stuck on the other side of the "Gutenberg Barrier." We must use all the wit and energy we can command to help them catch up with the evolution of communications. Some people believe our communications problems result from Gutenberg worship. They think the trouble is that too many communicators believe too much in the printed words that Gutenberg's invention of five hundred years ago made possible. But the important new fact we have discovered is that too many teachers have not yet even approached the "Gutenberg Barrier." They're mired down in an era that preceded Gutenberg by many generations. This notion of "Pre-Gutenberg Teaching," the dominant teaching method, was stumbled upon through chance observation plus deliberation. You can see the phenomenon for yourself any day. Walk down the corridors of most any school building, old or new. (High schools and colleges preferred. ) Glance into the classrooms and see what teachers think is the best means of communication. Chances are the teacher is talking at the assembled learners. This was a best method before Gutenberg and is well labeled as "Pre-Gutenberg Teaching." Further research, however, has helped to place "Pre-Gutenberg Teaching" more accurately in the evolution of communications methods. According to the authorities consulted, the very first method of communication employed by human beings was "Gestures and Sound." That is where our communications and teaching methods bogged down— at the very first era. With too many, the long evolution of communications through the ages never got started. Altogether too many of our teachers still today believe that the only and best way to communicate ideas is to stand before a group gesticulating and making verbal sounds. David Samoff, chairman of the board of the Radio Corporation of America, has pointed out that the quickening cadence of research" activities, especially in the communications field, is "already moving at near 'escape velocity.' " More research money was spent last year than in all the years from the Revolutionary War to World War II. The pace of product innovation has been enormously accelerated. Satellite systems for worldwide communications will soon be tried experimentally and likely will be commercially applied by 1970. He concludes that the "prospects for the future are as vast as the reach of man's inquiring mind and his creative imagination." Think of these things as you view the new products and as you appraise our audiovisual futures at the National Audiovisual Exhibit. Think too of what we must do to help all those lagging communicators to dare break away from the "Gi'stures and Soiuid" era of communications. We must help them catch up to the "Gutenberg Barrier" and overcome it. We must help them get readv for the coming era of "Satellitic Communications. " Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — July, 1961 325