Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

14 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 4 1936. He has completed some work toward the doctorate. Having served as chairman of the Santa Barbara Schools AudioVisual Education Committee from 1930 on, he became Director of Audio-Visual Education of the Santa Barbara City Schools in 1936 and, in 1939, of the Santa Barbara County Schools as well. As the first Director of AudioVisual Education in Santa Barbara, his was the job of planning and administering the department from the paper stage to actual operation. Administration of the department required setting up budget requirements, evaluating equipment and materials, purchasing supplies, providing proper housing, and developing a distribution system, as well as producing visual materials to meet special school needs. But he was not just a “keeper of things” ; the biggest part of his job involved working with supervisors and curriculum co-ordinators to analyze school needs f o r audio-visual aids ; helping teachers to use films, slides, flat pictures, recordings, and other aids effectively as part of their regular classroom instruction ; and planning with them the charts, graphs, dioramas, and models that had to be constructed. A continuous inservice training program for teachers was begun and special courses were given under the auspices of the Santa Barbara State College, with Mr. Noel as instructor. Santa Barbara became a study center for the American Council on Education Motion Picture Project. Evaluation of motion pictures as instructional materials and an analysis of the factors involved in their curricular uses were two of its objectives. As a consultant on this study (1927-39), Mr. Noel as sisted in the many experiments which were conducted. He is the author of one of the Council’s publications, P}'(>jecti)ig Motion Pictures in the Classroom, and a contributor t o several other studies related to this one. His activities as Director of AudioVisual Education for Santa Barbara were extended to include the county when demands from teachers become so insistent that service had to be provided. A clue to what happened in the educational use of audio-visual materials i n Santa Barbara City and County is to be found in the fact that classroom uses of films alone jumped from fewer than 100 uses per year to more than 20,000 per year. During his Directorship at Santa Barbara, Noel was also an instructor in Audio-Visual Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara Branch, from 1938 to 1940 and at the summer session of the University of California, in 1941. In March, 1942, Noel entered the U. S. Navy as a Lieutenant Commander assigned to the training-film i)roduction unit in the Bureau of Aeronautics at Washington. In accepting his Navy commission, he did not leave education, but continued his activities in a new sphere. Convinced that the ultimate effectiveness of the film and other visual aids was dependent on their relation to the curriculum and the use made of them by the instructor, he set about to convince others in the Navy Department. He was transferred in July, 1944, to the Bureau of Naval Personnel as the first Officer in Charge of the Utilization and Evaluation Service. One of his early jobs was to decide how many motion-picture projectors would be needed for training in the various Naval activities. Another was to deter mine how many officers would be needed to set up training-aids centers all over the world and to carry on the work of training instructors in the use of the visual materials which were rapidly becoming available. Still another task was to assist in the appraisal of available training aids and to work with officers in charge of Navy curriculum on the selection and use of these aids in the Navy Training Program. Teachers, supervisors, administrators, directors of audiovisual departments, and college professors were commissioned and assigned to help in the biggest training job the Navy ever had to do — and do in the shortest possible time! Over 100 officers, who would work in setting up a Navy-wide utilizationof-visual-aids program, were assigned to duty all the way from Adack, Alaska, to Recife, Brazil; from Brisbane, Australia, to Salerno, Italy. This was in addition to the many training activities within the continental limits of the United States. Typical duties of these officers were similar to those performed by an Audio-Visual-Aids Director of a large school system : 1. Working with the trainingofficers on general audio-visiial-instruction problems. 2. Handling instructor trainingin the effective use of films and other visual aids. ■‘5. Advising on the proper curricular selection of materials. 4. Maintaining facilities f o r servicing equipment. 5. Advising on district requests for equipment. d. Advising on distribution problems. 7. Co-ordinating visual aids with other local training programs. 8. Evaluating films and filmstrips in the light of field experiences. !). Advising training officers and instructors on proposed new production releases.