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

News from tne Department of AudioVisual Instruction, National Education Association oA fuMime Busy Summer for DA VI DAVI kept more than a little busy all summer. First off there was the DAVr departmental meeting at New York City during the NEA 92nd annual convention with plenty of DAVI representation in the NEA program itself. We've had many enthusiastic comments about the Demonstration Classroom—a 30' by 50' unit featuring examples of facilities to promote good use of instructional time and materials. The classroom was open continuously during exhibit hours in Madison Square Garden. After NEA and New York City we kept busy with other mcetini^s aininid by J. J. Mcpherson Executive Secretary, DAVI 1201 16th St., NW, Washington 6, D. C. DAVI President Lee Cochron and guest Bob LeFranc during the Chicago convention. the country, ending up at the National .Audio-Visual Convention in Chicago (see page 268). We were happy to have with us in Chicago a visitor from France: Dr. Robert LeFranc, audiovisual expert from the Centre National de Documentation Pedagogique in Paris. (See cut.) Benefit or Bother? For the past several years it has been the policy of DAVI to provide the D.AVI mailing list on an up-to-date addressograph tape or on 3x.5 cards at a moderate service charge to all organizations seeming to have a legitimate reason for wanting to tell our members of new equipment or materials. This has, undoubtedly, increased the amount of mail that you are receiving. Has it been a benefit to you to have these materials coming in? Or have vou found it a bother? Do Professional Payments Pain You? If so, compare the five or ten dollars you pay for your national and state audio-visual organizations with the following yearly cost paid to their national organizations by certain other working groups: Retail Clerks, $24; Brotherhood of Painters, S36; Iiiternation Chemical Workers, S48; Steel Workers, S36; Radio .Association, .■5120; Brewery Workers, S36: Newspaper Guild, $120. Many of these organizations also require initiation fees up to SI 00. It's an old bromide to say that you get no more from something than you put into it — but it's true just the same, so we add this final word, '*Supjjort your profession — your profession supports you!" Promising Practice \ new approach to audio-visual workshops has been started this year in Iowa under the joint sponsorship of the State Department of Public Instruction and the Audio-Visual Education .Association of Iowa. This is a ])lan of conducting pilot center workshops in various parts of the state. The.se pilot center workshops are two-day affairs. The first day is devoted to demonstrations of teaching procedures using audio-visual aids in an exchange of ideas by the teacher. The second day has been devoted to problems of administrators and methods of improving instruction. The unique feature of the workshops is that all planning of activities and demonstrations has been done by the teachers themselves. Problems of vital concern to teachers have been discussed and teachers have been given the opportunity of exchanging ideas and demonstrating techniques they have found effective. Each pilot center is visited by an evaluating team consisting of Lee Cochran and John Hedges, of the State University of Iowa; Robert Paulson, of Iowa State Teachers College: John Litherland and Herold Kooser, of Iowa State College; and Forest J. Moore, of the State Department of Public Instruction. Reports from these evaluations are being made available to other schools in the state interested in conducting audiovisual workshops in the future. If you are interested in additional information about these pilot centers, why not write to Lee Cochran? "Look and Listen" Reports .A few .Americans who have lived in England have shouted loudly that American schools are no good because they have departed from the fundamentals as taught so well in English schools. So we were somewhat amused to find quoted in Look and Listen, an English audio-visual journal, a critic of the English schools who says among other things. "Employers complain to me that some boys leaving school nowadays cannot spell words of five letters." The same critic says of audio-visual education, "It is a wicked waste of money. .Are we going to abandon the 3 R's for the 3 L's— Look, Listen, and Laze? It means we are going to amuse the children not educate them." The editor of Look nnd Listen replies sanely to this line of criticism, "Once again it is the teachers who have the answer to these critics in their hands. It and when looking and listening do encourage lazing, then the fault is the teacher's. Showing films and turning receiver knobs are not soft options. Done properly they involve very hard work, but the results are correspondingly the greater." May we extend our congratulations across the seas! Incidentally, those of you who would like to add this fine English journal to your reference shelf can do so by writing to 4,") Dorset Street, London, W. 1, England. 264 Educational Screen