The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

October, 193 5 Page 217 Characteristics in Still Pictures for Instructiona Use in the Classroom ^^ ''"^ trohnger TRAINING teachers in the use of visual and other sensory aids is greatly needed in most sections of the United States. We can expect no great progress in this field until the teachers know why the aids are needed, have certain stand- ards by which such aids are judged, and know something of the best methods — insofar as they have been determined—for the use of the aids. The study under discussion today deals with the making of a scale against which teachers may check pictures for use in the classroom. Standards for judging pictures for educational purposes are very vague and yet pictures are probably more used in the daily routine of the classroom than any other visual-sensory aid except perhaps the blackboard. By means of a questionnaire, opinions were gath- ered from state and city officials of visual instruc- tion departments. Qualities or characteristics were classified into two groups, Technical and Instruction- al, and a distribution of points with a total of 100 was made according to the estimated value of each quality. As many of you know, the subject of training teachers in the proper use of visual-sensory aids has been a hobby of mine for several years. Hence it is not svirprising that when I begin to make a special study of anj-thing in the field of visual in- struction, it is very likely to emerge related to this topic of teachers training. I do not believe we shall ever achieve any worthwhile goals in this field until a large per cent of the teachers have had such train- ing. Some states, notably Pennsylvania, have pro- vided for this training very adequately but many states have relatively tew teachers who really know how to use the visual aids that are put into their hands. Although my own work in the Bureau of Visual Instruction at the University of Colorado has to do entirely with projected aids, I personally feel that aids such as field trips, pictures, posters, exhibits, and the like, should be used to a greater extent in the daily routine of the classroom than the pro- jected aids. Yet many teachers when visual aids are mentioned think only of motion pictures, lantern slides, or filmstrips. Pictures—loose pictures, still pictures, flat pictures, whatever you choose to call them—are probably more generally used by the av- erage teacher than any other single type of visual- sensory aid. If a check list has ever been made by Secretary Bureau of Visual Instruction, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado a large group of teachers of all types of aids used over a given period, I have not seen it, but for my own satisfaction, I asked several teachers in an Ex- tension Class to check the aids for one week and except for blackboard work, the pictures were great- ly in the majority in that small group. However, despite the fact that pictures are so uni- versally used, very few teachers seem to have any definite standards by which the pictures are judged. I had noticed this repeatedly at the beginning of my classes in visual aids, and it was forcibly brought to my attention by a simple experiment at Teach- ers College, Columbia University. Dr. Edwin H. Reeder was giving a Unit Course in visual aids. One day he brought to class a large group of geog- raphies. They were good modern books and he used a text of which he had enough copies for each member of the class. Each student was asked to select what seemed to him to be the best and the poorest pictures in the text, judged by the teaching values. Only a few minutes were given for the study of the pictures for the only purpose was to bring out the need of study of pictures that are to be used for teaching purposes. A list was made on the blackboard, one column of the numbers of the best illustrations and the other of the poorest. I do not recall what I considered the best picture, but I do recall very vividly my choice for the poor- est, and as it happened. Dr. Reeder had listed the same one as his choice of the poorest. It was a street scene in Belgium, I believe, but it might just as well have been a street scene in New Zealand, Colo- rado, England or Canada. There was nothing in the picture which would in any sense be typical of the country—it was merely a scene in the business sec- tion of a city. Yet to my great surprise, two dif- ferent teachers had listed that very picture as their first choice of a good teaching picture. I think at that very hour my decision to make a study of standards for pictures was reached. That was four years ago and I am now working on the problem. My two-fold idea in this problem has been to make a scale against which teachers may check pictures that they wish to use; then, as a second and perhaps more important step, to actually carry on an experiment to see if this scale does help the teachers who use it. The first part is completed. The scale is ready to use and I shall give you the procedure that has been used in constructing it.