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

RESEARCH AND CORRELATION Film Series Provides Physics Course by Warren P. Everote Vice-President, Research and Production Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, Inc. Encyclopaedia Britannica Films has just completed its biggest year of production. During this year we completed successfully the most massive project of its Itind ever undertaken in the classroom film field — the production of a full year's course in high school physics. At the same time we carried through an expanded production program of films and filmstrips designed for major subject-matter areas ranging from the primary grades through the senior high school. This year's program had three objectives: To produce films and filmstrips most closely designed to meet the urgent needs of teachers; to employ outstanding talent and the most effective motion picture techniques in all productions; to take the lead in pioneering new types of materials, new subject matter areas, and new methods of production. All of these aims were reflected in our activities during the year. The endeavor to tailor our production more scientifically to school needs h.is required increased emphasis on researdi, including the study of the curriculum and the assessment of the place of films and filmstrips in relationship to other instructional materials in typical units of study. An important research activity during the year was the publication of a comprehensive set of correlations of our films and filmstrips with textbooks most widely used from kindergarten through grade twelve. Research was also basic to another facet of our program that was expanded upon this year. This is the continuing evaluation of our present librarv and the revision of films to bring them up to date or to make them better suited to current school needs. Among these completely new editions, called second editions, released during the year were' such essehtial films for the prirnary grades as FOOD STORE. ROBIN REDBREAST, and FARM ANIMALS: films for elementary science, such as ROOTS OF PLANTS and THE FROG; and such elementary social studies films as ARGENTINA PEOPLE OF THE PAMPA and BRAZIL PEOPLE OF THE HIGHLANDS. The year's production program provided a balanced offering for every grade level including films and filmstrips designed for important new fields as well as those designed to strengthen popular old ones. Of exceptional value for the primary grades is a group of exciting new films for reading readiness and creative expression, including such titles as MOTHER RABBITS FAMILY and the highly imaginative MRS. .\ND MR. PE.\COCK. E'or much the same audiences we released a new set of filmstrip series developed from the work of Walt Disney. These include DISNEYLAND, THE ARCTIC WILDERNESS, ADVENTURE STORIES, and others. For the upper elementary grades our production included a number of films in science and a very broadscale program of new films and filmstrips in world geography that blanket the globe from Latin America to Southeast Asia and on to Western Europe. Of particular significance in elementary social studies is a complete package of three films on the American Indian that provides a historical sweep from pre-Columbian times to the present day, quite unlike any other film materials now in the field. Complementing these films, we also released an imaginative and highly artistic filmstrip series on the cultures of the Plains and Woodlands Indians. .Among the noteworthy films produced for the high school level were additions to our series in world history and .American history, among them THE RENAISSANCE. LEONARDO DA VINCI. SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, and WORLD WAR I. We also added to our basic and everpopular offering of biology films with such titles as PROTOZOA: ONECELLED ANIMALS, WORK OF THE BLOOD, GROWTH OF SEED.S, and INSECT LIFE CYCLE: THE PERIODIC CICADA. The production effort that went into these groups of films illustrates the emphasis in our program on the second objective: To employ outstanding talent and the most effective motion picture techniques. Our new group of biology films contains photography of great distinction — including sequences of photomicrography, time lap.se photography, and other camera techniques. The.se are the work of such noted specialists in photomicrography as Dr. Roman Vishniac and the famous team of Dr. Bremen R. Lutz and Dr. George A. Fulton of Boston University, and Dr. William Harlow in time lapse photography. To put outstanding production (|ualities into our films and filmstrips we have also continued our program of overseas production on a broad scale. Our purpose here is always to make our films wherever they can be most effectively produced. Hence we went to Vienna to make our new orchestra series and to France to make our distinguished series in Medieval history. This year we went to Italy for THE RENAISSANCE and LEONARDO DA VINCI and to England for SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. We also expanded our production program in geography, sending cameramen as far west as Burma and India, as far south as Argentina, and eastward to the Netherlands and Germany. An important new development in classroom film design was the production and release by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films of the complete course in high school physics. Comprising 162 films, each a half-hour long and in color, this series presented Professor Harvey E. White of the University of California teaching an introductory physics course to high school students in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The course was filmed at Pittsburgh's educational television station, WQED, simultaneously with Dr. White's live telecasts to high school classrooms. The production was made possible by a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the Fund for the Advancement of Education of the Ford Foundation. Even before the filming of the course was completed, it was in use in the Chicago Public Schools, and, by year's end, some forty school systems were teaching physics through films. The course was also being tested in a broad scale study of the effectiveness of visual teaching conducted by the University of Wisconsin, and financed by the Ford Foundation. This study involved telecasting the course to 3000 students in high schools in seventy Wisconsin communities. 580 EdScreen & AV Guide — December, 1957