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

editorial EMPHASIS ON AUDIO No matter how you are accustomed to pronounce audiovisual, the accent in this issue of "educational screen and AUDIO -visual guide" is definitely on the AUDIO. But this shift of accent is only slight. In every issue we are concerned with the audio part of audiovisual materials and equipment and their use. Not only is there Pat Bildersee's regular SOUND ADVICE columns, but audio as an integral part of audiovisual is in practically every article. But when the emphasis is upon audio, separated from audiovisual, the tape recorder gets special attention. When the emphasis is upon the use of the tape recorded, the language laboratory just naturally becomes involved. The development of the language laboratory for the teaching of foreign languages is one of the most significant audio developments of the past decade. It has come to the colleges first, but increasingly, adaptations of language laboratory installations and methods are coming into the high schools. If the audiovisual director is at all inclined to be gadget-minded — if he's inclined to be more interested in the electronics and mechanics of audiovisual equipment than in what the equipment does — he'll find a dangerous paradise in the idea of a language laboratory. We've seen the results of this in pictures of installations costing from twenty to thirty thousand dollars. Such laboratories are so complex and the operating console so elaborate that no teacher without an engineering degree and a special license could possiblv run the thing. We've also see simple inexpensive installations being used for extremely effec tive teaching. Some wise guiding words about language laboratories were recently spoken by Paul E. King* to the Language Department faculty at Columbia Universitv: *Dr. Paul E. King is associated with Magnetic Recording Industries of New York City. Ol tiie several hundred Language Laboratories in opi lation today, no two of them are entirely alike. A; 1(1 within any given laboratory, no two instructors are using its facilities in exactly the sai e way. "The Language Laboratory is a leaching loot. Like any tool its use and utility depend upon circumstances and the person using it, — upon the course of study and the instructor. By itself, electronic equipment can never do the job; like an automobile, it must be guided and steered properly to reach its goal." When the audiovisual director is called upon to assist the language department in developing a language laboratory, his highest skills and abilities are being called for. Here he can go wild in the development of an electronic wonderland, or he can give real help in building a simple and functionally effective tool. The starting point must be consideration of the job to be done — the purpose of the laboratory, and the purpose of the teaching. The teacher and the way he expects to teach are the factors that should determine how the components are put together for a language laboratory. And before the audiovisual expert can help in developing specifications, he must first help the language instructors determine quite specifically how the equipment will be used. More than for any other audiovisual tools and equipment, the language laboratoi-y must be custom built to specific teaching needs. The audiovisual director has a most important role to plav in first helping to determine those needs, then filling them. So, in this issue, with its emphasis upon the AUDIO, there's more attention given to teaching than to teaching tools per se. After all, it's how those tools are used and what happens to the learner that really matters. Paul e. Rcc} 174 EdScreen & AV Guide — April, 1958