The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

September, 1941 Proceedings of the D. V. I. Meeting Page 291 tomers. The willingness of these com- panies to pay commercial producers from fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars for a film to meet their par- ticular requirements, indicates that they have some confidence in the efltective- ness of the sound slide film. For classroom use, however, the edu- cational sound slide film has lagged be- hind other visual aids. There is little demand at present from teachers for educational sound slide films since their actual effectiveness as teaching aids has not been experimentally determined. There are few commercially produced teaching sound slide films available. Schools, or individual teachers could, of course, make up their own sound slide films to suit their particular needs. Any series of photographs, charts, or maps can be made up into a slide film by a commercial slide film producer, at a cost of less than fifty cents per frame. Once the film is made extra prints can be purchased for only a few cents a frame. Home recordings might be used for short films, or a single fifteen-min- ute acetate record could be made for about ten dollars. A recent article by Orlin D. Trapp' contains many valuable suggestions to school producers of both sound and silent film slides. Considering the relatively high cost of producing a good sound slide film, and the very low cost of making extra cop- ies of both the film and the record, the most promising future for sound slide films probably lies in commercial produc- tion. A fifteen minute sound slide film could be purchased by a school for about five dollars, and would then be avail- able for each succeeding class. Some investigations on the use of sound slide films in the classroom have been carried on by the National Re- search Council's Committee on Scientfic Aids to Learning, under the direction of Dr. Irvin Stewart^ Five films, sampling instructional levels from primary school through high school, were produced un- der the direction of the Executive Com- mittee of the Metropolitan New York Branch of the Department of Visual In- struction of the National Education As- sociation.' These films were shown in 58 New York schools to 23,506 students. In the opinion of an overwhelming ma- jority of the teachers using these films, the medium of the sound slide film is suitable for classroom use, and is val- uable as a teaching aid. The results of this study indicate that the sound slide film may be used suc- cessfully at the instructional levels and in the subject matter areas sampled. However, the number of cases used in controlled experimentation with these films was too small to yield reliable evi- dence as to their actual effectiveness as audio-visual teaching aids. 1—Orlin D. Trnpp— The. Vse and Produc- tion of Sound and Silent Filmslides, Miniature Slides and Microfilm in Schools. Bibliofilm Service c/o U. S. Dept. of Agric, Wash. D.C. 2—Dr. F. Dean McClusky and Esther L. Berg— What are the Educational Values of the Sound-Slide Film? 1941 Yearbook, New York Society for the Experimental Study of Educa- tion. 3—These films are now available to schools on an experimental basis. See EDrc.\T10i»AI* SCHKKN", June 1941. Photo by A. R. Clish Pictures from the sound slide films in production. Top: Adding sulphuric acid to soda produces carbon dioxide. Center: Common fire extinguishers contain soda and acid. Bottom: To operate turn upside down.