Taken from Google Cache 2/16/2006 09:23AM

As we come to the end of the l900s, it is time to assess where we came from, where we are, and where we are going.

In the beginning, there was the log, the student, and the master. From this, the writing slate and the printed page developed. As time moved on, the one-room schoolhouse became the best development in teaching the children of a growing population. However, education was still lacking the ability to effectively convey many of the needed concepts of a changing society and its improving mechanization. The greatest need in education was to teach concepts and information about new developments to students with little or no knowledge of or experience with the rapidly changing world. Furthermore, this new information needed to be taught in the most rapid and least time consuming way.

The societal changes taking place around the early 1900's and the demand this placed on the educational system engendered developments in the field of Media. Early in the 1900s, a roving museum of various exhibits was developed in St. Louis, Missouri. Most agree that this was the real beginning of the field of visual education. The purpose of the roving museum was to give children the opportunity to see various objects that until that time had only been figments of their imagination as developed from teachers talking about real things. At the same time that the roving museum was making changes in education, the field of photography was developing into a more feasible and easy method for producing images of real objects.

Photography made it possible to produce a lanternslide that was projected to a white screen by means of an oil-burning lamp. In addition to the photographically produced image, slides were also produced by drawing or printing on glass slides. With photographic slides, actual or real objects could be projected. The capability to produce hand drawn or printed slides allow for images representing fictional events to be projected. Both had their place in creating a more interesting presentation and attracting greater interest in the subject being taught. The world of Visual Education was created. Children were no longer living in a word-oriented world.

Visual Education was a great improvement in the classroom environment, but on the horizon was still another medium that would give even greater meaning to the real world, the motion picture. The early motion picture was only a presentation that gave motion and realness to objects that were already understood and recognized. However, in presenting the object in motion, still greater interest was created in the mind of the learner. The early motion picture was quite crude, but it was magic to those who marveled with what they were able to see. As a result of the motion picture, events in everyday life as well as the battles of World War I brought reality to those at home.

Visual Education was only a phase in the development of Media. Not only was a visual moving image a great advancement, but also recorded audio was being used to present sounds that in the past could only be heard as they occurred. By combining the motion picture with audio sound, the moving object could be seen from a projected image and its sound heard from a recording cut on a spinning disk called a record.

Early attempts to match sound with the motion picture were not too successful. A film being projected while a record played did not produce the most accurate combination of image and sound. The synchronization of the two was a major problem, but it was the beginning of the change from Visual Education to Audio-Visual Education. Finally, a method of recording sound onto film solved the problems of synchronizing the sound and the picture.

The real birth of Audio-Visual Education came during World War II. The successful development of the Acetate Safety film rendered a medium that was safe to use in the classroom. Until this development, film used in the motion picture industry was highly flammable. Safety film and the production of films for training our military during World War II proved to be one of the greatest advancements for classroom teaching. Training films were successful in rapidly training the military in the best methods of warfare.

At the end of World War II, many teaching faculty had experienced the benefits of the motion picture. It was only natural that those who had seen these benefits would bring their experience and knowledge to the educational classroom. To prove the motion picture's great advantage, a number of research experiments were conducted contrasting lecture methods against the use of the motion picture. Obviously, the motion picture was superior. Even though such experiments by their very nature were flawed, the motion picture became a normal part of classroom teaching.

Although the motion picture was the most visible medium in education to come from World War II, another medium that played a major role in the area of Audio-Visual was the audio tape recorder. Disk and film recordings were already viable means of preserving audio, but both formats had limited usefulness. Disk recordings were restrictive because of short recording times and the need for elaborate and delicate recording mechanisms. Also, disk and film recordings required special studios designed for their particular needs. Neither was practical in field operation. A new method of recording in the field was first developed through what was known as a wire recorder. The wire recorder used extremely fine wire on which magnetic impulses were recorded. Although the wire recorder was a successful method of recording in the field, sound quality was poor and it was difficult to maintain wire on the spool. A tangled wire soon rendered the wire recording useless. In another development, microscopic iron particles were placed on a piece of thin paper tape. Later the tape was changed to a very thin piece of acetate plastic. Most of the development of the audiotape that came after World War II was a result of experiments conducted during the War. The audio tape recorder proved to be successful and soon became a great teaching tool in the classroom. The sound motion picture and the audiotape made the field of Media truly the field of Audio-Visual.

The years of the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s made the field of Audio-Visual a fascinating time in education. With the motion picture projector, overhead projector, opaque projector, filmstrip/slide projector, and audio tape recorder, media personnel were busy producing materials of all types for use on equipment found in the typical classroom. Media production was the name of the game.

The field of Media has never been a stagnate pool of water. It is more like a roaring mountain stream. While all of the production was going on, new developments were arriving. In the late 1950s, the introduction of television was the coming thing in education. Many experiments in the use of television produced some interesting developments. A film company permitted their entire film library to be used in a school system television experiment in Hagerstown, Maryland. Another experiment funded by the Ford Foundation resulted in Airborne Television through the use of aircraft flying in circles at great heights over northern Indiana. Schools within a rather wide area could watch specially produced educational programs on their television sets. However, experiments such as these soon became of questionable value when the video tape recorder/player was developed for use in the classroom.

During this "heyday" in the field of Media, many other concepts were being developed and experimented with. An interesting area was that of programmed learning and the teaching machine. Although this was being experimented with in the 1960s, it was not a particular new area, but one that received a short spurt of popularity. Originally, the teaching machine concept was developed and experimented with by B.F. Skinner during World War II at Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Illinois. When the area of Media became interested in programmed learning and teaching machines, many media personnel conducted research experiments using both linear and branching methods of writing a learning program. Although it did show some promise, for the most part, the inflexibility and impersonal nature of programmed learning soon brought it to an end.

Now let us step into the new world, the world of computers. The development of the personal computer has stopped the production of materials that were a mainstay of the field of Media. No longer is there a need for thermo transparency makers, spirit duplicators, transfer lettering, and many other similar production processes. The computer can now do all of these plus much more in a faction of the time required by the older methods. Not only can the computer do all of this and better, but also the computer will store the information for easy retrieval to use at a later date. Media persons with all of their production skills are no longer needed. All production that is done in the area of Media is now done with computers.

The area of Media has gone through a complete metamorphosis. There is very little in the current area that was originally conceived as Audio-Visual. New developments and viewpoints have resulted in changes that may have prevented Media from becoming what was originally conceived as the great area that would change and improve the teaching/learning process. Whether or not Media actually caused the changes that we now see, the teaching/learning process has been changed. We, in the area of Media, would like to believe that our metamorphosis has been a result of the influences we instigated in the area of Education.

The future of the area of Media is difficult to predict, but we must continue with promoting every promising new technological advancement in the area of Education. In the meantime, we need to develop a philosophy that will define our place in Education. Such a philosophy has been proposed by Dale of Ohio and Larson of Indiana, but neither has been fully developed in the area of Media or Education.

In addition to developing a philosophy in Media, we need to develop a direction in which to continue. In doing this, we must build expertise that is above and beyond what is commonly known in general education. We must become the experts who we think we are. No place exists in the area of Media where we are merely talkers. We must be able to show our expertise as well as know what our expertise actually is.

At the beginning of the new millennium, it is time for those who are in the area of Media to survey where we have been, where we are, where we should be going, and where we are going. The ball is in your court.

Robert C. Wiseman
Department of Media Services
Eastern Illinois University
Charleston, IL 61920
cfrcw1@eiu.edu