Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

Moy, 1946 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE 15 The Use of Audio-Visual Aids BY LOUIS E. RATHS Professor of Education, The Ohio State University Audio-visual aids may or may not be aids. The very name suggests that there are significant aims pursued and the audiovisual materials are supposed to be aids to the accomplishments of these ends. All too frequently, however, the movies, the recordings, the slides, the film strips, and other resources are ends in themselves. They are used, and then the teacher and students go back to the text and disregard quite completely the potentialities of the aids. At The Ohio State University, the writer and two of his former students. Dr. Henrietta Fleck, now of Normal University, Normal, Illinois, and Dr. Alberta Young, now of the University of Tennessee, at Knoxville, Tennessee, developed a series of guides to accompany the use of audio-visual materials. Dr. Fleck’s materials are related to a resource unit entitled “The Relation of Schools to Society.” Dr. Young’s materials are focused upon the furthering of human relationships through the meeting of human needs. Both projects involved the development of clear-cut purposes, an outline of the major directions that each unit was to take. For example, in Dr. Young’s project she wanted to emphasize greatly the needs that people have, the social values that they seem to champion, the personal problems that they face, the ways in which they treated other people and responded to the Summary of a talk at the Michigan Audio-Visual Conference, Detroit, April 6, 1946. treatment of other people, and a consideration of how situations charged with personal frustration might be reconstructed. A search was made for films, recordings, and readings which would illustrate these five headings. When materials were found which seemed adequate, a rather elaborate analysis was made. First of all, a synopsis of the materials was written that was much more complete than the usual single paragraph. Following each synopsis are several pages of writing in which the human problems in the materials are abstracted and pointed up. This is followed by some suggestions as to the needs of the individuals who appear in the films, the recordings, or the readings. After some discussion of the needs of each individual, the guide presents an analysis of propositions related to social values and to teaching. Then follows a section devoted to ideas for assignments to students, growing out of their use of the aids. There is a section FILMS OF MERIT 16MM SOUND SILENT 8MM For Teaching, Recess and Entertainment RENT SALE Write for comjtlcte list also for related experiences, and the whole is completed by suggestions for further reading. In the guide this matter of human problems, human needs, human behavior, social values and social situations, reading, writing, and direct experience are all integrated as far as possible. Each guide is so rich in possible suggestions that no teacher coidd use all of them. The guide constitutes a resource from which the teacher may choose problems, values, etc., that are appropriate for the group. In some situations it is possible that the teacher might make very little use of the guide, but its use does give a feeling of security in handling new teaching aids. Moreover, if this service were widely available, if adequate guides were prepared for many of the aids, teachers could read and study them before they chose the aid and would have a much better basis for deciding whether to use the aid. At The Ohio State University these guides have now been used over a period of three years by as many as one hundred different instructors, and we feel reasonably sure that they fill a need in the field. We have had more use and more intelligent use of teaching aids since Dr. Fleck and Dr. Young started their work. At this moment sample copies of the guides are available only for a number of the human relations films that were developed by the Commission on Human Relations under the general direction of Dr. Alice Keliher.