The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

46 The Educational Screen I AMONG THE MAGAZINES AND BOOKS CONDUCTED BY MARION F. LANPHIER Your Garden and Home (January) "The Educational Museum of the Cleveland Public Schools", by Harold T. Clark, reports in detail the purpose, history and development of this educational experiment in furnishing a collection of materials and objects for use in the schoolrooms of Cleveland. The author then discusses the future of the educational museum idea, the need and inestimable value of such institutions, with further comment upon the specific needs of Cleveland's museum. Of particular interest to our readers is the author's report on the visual aids furnished by the Museum. The visual material from the Educational Museum is sent to schools for one week, the deliveries being regularly made by tvifo trucks devoted entirely to this service. Materials are ordered through the office of the Principal. They comprise sets of lantern slides, motion picture films, mounted pictures, charts, and traveling exhibits of all kinds, and include as well stereopticons, motion picture projectors and silver screens for use therewith. The Museum owns and keeps in circulation tens of thousands of the finest lantern slides and a half a million feet of films of such high educational valuq as the Yale Series of Chronicles of America. The number of lantern slides alone used in a single year is over three quarters of a million. When one learns that between 13,000 and 14,000 public school classes are served from the Educational Museum every month of the school year, that each of these classes may contain forty to fifty pupils, and that almost the same number of requests could not be filled, he will realize what a stupendous project the Museum has now become. Junior-Senior High School Clearing House (December) This number of the publication sponsored by the New York University School of Education is devoted entirely to the subject of visual education. Mr. John H. Shaver edited the number, which is issued under the chairmanship of Ralph E. Pickett. The list of contributors with the titles of the articles by each is as follows : "The Place of the Motion Picture in a Program of Visual Instruction" by Daniel C. Knowlton, "Educating the Twentieth-Century Youth" by Anna Verona Dorris, "Why We Should Use Pictures in Teaching" by J. E. Hansen, "The Administration of Visual Instruction in the Public Schools" by Frederick Dean McClusky, "The Organization of a Department of Visual Education" by James G. Sigman, "Administration of a Department of Visual Instruction" by Harry H. Haworth, "How the Movies Talk" by Harry E. Butler, "Sunlight Printing" by Arthur M. Seybold, "School Journeys and School Journalism" by L. Paul Miller. The Literary Digest (January 17) In the department of "Science and Invention", the Literary Digest presents a lengthy discussion of "Industrial Efficiency by Amateur Movie" with many excerpts from the original source material as it appeared in the November 1930 issue of Movie Makers, written by Louis M. Bailey. The Digest article begins, "What are 'Therbligs'?" We discover that these mysterious elements are those essential movements and motions of an operator in an industrial process, and were named after their investigator, Mr. Frank G. Gilbreth. Turn that gentleman's name about and reverse the first two letters and you have "therbligs," those fundamental motions that must be studied by the amateur 16 mm. machine to discover "the one best way" of accomplishing the operation under observation. To make a micromotion study, the operation to be analyzed is photographed, including a microchronometer, a clock having a hand making twenty revolutions per minute and a dial with 100 divisions. Thus time may be recorded to within one-two-thousandths of a minute. The small unit of time recorded has been designed by the Gilbreths as a "wink." Mr. Bailey goes on : 'The clock may be done away with by running the film through the camera at a cpnstant speed. Thus, if the film passes through the gate at the rate of 1,000 frames per minute, the elapsed time between any two frames is .001 minute. "When the operation to be studied has been photographed and processed, the work has really just begun. It is here that the skill of the analyst is demonstrated. "Using a small screen, the film is projected frame by frame. The motions of the operator are broken down into fundamental motions known as 'therbligs'. There are seventeen of these elements, and it has been determined that all hand motions may be classified in this group. Thus it is possible to separate and measure these units, to compare them under varying conditions, and arrive at an evaluation of human endeavor. "Once the 'one best way' has been established, the motion picture camera also affords the best method for training new operators, and in the formation of proper habits on the part of the old workers. A complicated operation that defied definition and description can now be photographed, and the film run over and over again until the operator has grasped the fundamentals." Some unusual uses to which this method of study may be put are noted in conclusion. Says Mr. Bailey : "To determine the space in which a high-speed elevator may come to a stop without causing discomfort to the passengers,