Team 4
From Instructional Technology Wiki
Susan Roberts, Morgan Green, Richard Tuttell, Kevin White
First Paper
Educational Television
Introduction
For many American children television becomes the primary educator after they learn the words mommy and daddy from their parents. Big Bird and Cookie Monster, characters from the preschool series Sesame Street, may be added to a child’s vocabulary at a very early age. Television is often a child's first exposure to media, according to the University of Michigan Health System. Children as young as two years of age start viewing habits. These habits continue through adolescence into adulthood. they are used in schools and are viewed at home for entertainment and educational purposes. Educational Television is defined as programming that emphasizes formal classroom instruction and enrichment, according to the Museum of Broadcast Education (Zechowski, 2007) .
Description
Larry Cuban, author of Teacher and Machines classifies instructional television into three categories. The first coined Total Instructional Programming consists of all instruction coming from the televised instructor. The teacher performs a supervisory roll and programs are viewed in totality by the entire class. In this scenario the intent was to compensate for teacher shortages in various areas of the United States. One prime example of these type of televised curriculum are programs administered in American Samoa during the mid to late sixties. The second type of instructional television described by Dr. Cuban is considered supplemented televised instruction where the teacher prepares the class for the televised instruction, then presents the televised materials and follows the televised instruction with discussion and assignments based on the televised curriculum. The third application described is the most limited in terms of viewing hours and demonstrates the most structured approach of using television in the classroom. Teachers choose in a rather discriminant manner the extent and manner in which the students views the televised curriculum. Moreover the application of televised instruction is on par with and balanced between other mechanical teaching aids such as film, film strips, audio recordings and the like.
History
The potential for educating students through the broadcast media was recognized early in the development of television. In 1932, the University of Iowa (W9XK) lays claim to being the first educational institution to produce and broadcast video programming, according to the Federal Communications Commission. (The audio portion of the program was broadcast on radio station WSUI). During Congressional debates on the Communications Act of 1934, some argued that as much as one-fourth of the public airwaves should be reserved for instructional purposes. By 1953, the Federal Communications Commission had set aside 242 channels for education. Educational television was officially renamed in 1967, in the United States, to "public television" (Zechowski, 2007). Resistance from teachers to use the new media in the classroom was often attributed to bias that visual instruction, as opposed to lecture and readings, was a crude and unreliable means of imparting knowledge – “a modality used by dominant forces to seduce naïve populations into compliance” (Goldfarb, 2002). Such attitudes about the use of television in the classroom may explain in part why it was rarely used as a teaching resource (Cuban, 1986) in the first few decades after its inception. Surveys conducted during the 1970s indicated that instructional television was used as an accessory “rather than the primary vehicle for basic instruction,” according to Cuban. Another cause of lack of use as a teaching resource may have been its name change to "public television," because "formal instruction was too narrow to entice sweeping federal recognition....However, it now serves as a method to educate the nation through formal instruction and enrichment" (Zechowski, 2007). Other reasons cited by a West Virginia study conducted in 1977 and 1978 for the lack of use were inconvenient broadcast times, no equipment or facilities, no time and inconvenient facilities.Now that televisions are more prevalent in schools and video cassette recorders (VCRs) and digital video disc (DVD) players are available for playing prerecorded programs, the impediments of lack of equipment and broadcast times should not be as significant a hindrance. A more recent survey confirms that. The 1997 study of school uses of television and video, sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, showed a great majority of teachers had a positive attitude about the use of television in the classroom with 92 percent saying that television and video help them teach more effectively (Reid-Wallace, 1997). As for finding time for video lessons, the survey reported that 72 percent of educators said it did not take time away from critical subjects. The problem with equipment availability seems to have been resolved by the 1990's, as the survey noted that 98 percent of teachers said they had television and video accessibility.
Positive Uses
While showing televised programs to students can be considered a passive exercise, which would seem to increase transitional distance between the instructor and student, some educational programming includes lesson plans to integrate the video lesson into the subject matter being taught. Cable in the Classroom, which was created in 1989, provides access to commercial-free programs to schools and supplemental teaching materials. Approximately 71,000 public and private k-12 schools use Cable in the Classroom, according to the cable industry sponsored organization. Study guides are provided by cable broadcasters such as the History Channel, Discovery Channel and A&E Network, The guides include summaries of the material, vocabulary words, sample questions and discussion ideas. As for the educational impact of all this viewing, study results can be used to argue both sides – positive and negative. Many studies have indicated that education programs the involve thinking and language skills have a dramatic and long-term positive effect on early reading and subsequent classroom success. (Bickham, Wright, and Huston, 2003) For example, the viewing of the Public Broadcasting Station children’s program Sesame Street by preschoolers was shown to help children read books on their own earlier than those who did not watch to program. A report also found a positive correlation between children between the ages of 2 and 3 who watched educational television and higher scores on vocabulary tests, letter and word recognition, and readiness for school (Wright et al., 2001).
Abuses
In the early 1960s educational television (ETV) was introduced in American Samoa, the first large scale project of its kind. Funded to the tune of $1 million by the U.S Congress, ETV was supposed to be the answer to improving an inadequate education system without the need to train or import hundreds of teachers. (Cuban, 1986) It was considered by some as a pilot program that could be integrated into mainland schools if proven successful. Educational success, however, was not the only goal of the ETV program. Politically, it was also being used to bolster U.S. prestige in a cold war era where an edge in technological superiority was at stake. (Goldfarb, 2002). Televised programs made up the core curriculum at all grade levels and monopolized the majority of a student’s day. Early reports of student progress through this system were encouraging, but concerns soon developed about the amount of television viewing used in the classroom and the lack of teacher input on content. (Cuban, 1986). Local teachers were not involved in the development of the program and the implication was that the program was misused and maladjusted to the system. In the end it appeared that the use of ETV was a failure due to the implementation of the medium and lack of balanced use and in the classroom and proper supervision by qualified instructors. One study reported that Samoan students exposed to television became less concerned with success and respectful of authority and family values than those who had no exposure to television (Goldfarb, 2002). By the late 1970s, less than 20 years after it was implemented, ETV in American Samoa was being used sporadically and only as a supplement to classroom teaching (Cuban, 1986). The very fact that ETV offered only one-way instruction, and no means of interacting, was seen as condemning video lessons to never be more than an enhancement to serious teaching (Means et al., 1994). Other studies have raised concerns ranging from shorter attention spans to increased levels of violence. One such program that has drawn considerable amounts of criticism mainly due to its commercial nature is Channel One which has offered schools free loan of television equipment in exchange for a twelve-minute viewing agreement on a daily basis in the classrooms where the equipment resides. According to About Channel One (2007), currently six million students are viewing their broadcast. However since the company inception of the program in 1989, the company has been sold several times and is currently owned by Alloy Media and Marketing. The programming consist of small segments of news and articles dispersed between commercials targeted to the captive teenage audience. Debate has been especially heated due to the provocative and detrimental nature of some of the products being advertised. This summer NBC announced that it is planning on partnering with the company and producing original content for the in-school program (About Channel One, 2007).
Summary
Educational television, though experiencing birth, rebirth and renaissance periods appears to be relegated to the lower grades and used primarily in the afternoons with traditionally light subject matters, rather than reading and mathematics. Teacher's list several reasons for not using ETV that are similar to why teachers have not fully embraced other technologies: Inconvenient broadcast times, lack of equipment, lack of time in the classroom, no facilities for viewing (Means et al., 1994). Used primarily as a supplement rather than a core to the classroom curriculum, educational television has failed to meet the needs of the schools and live up to its earlier promises and hopes (Dowling, 1996). The role of the teacher in ETV has varied from being the one who turns on the set to being an active participant in emphasizing the televised lessons and discussing the program content. The role of the learner has likewise varied from passive observer to participant in discussions before, during or after the video presentation. The role of the content developer originally was to provide packaged information of a generic form and in a certain number of subjects that could be used for classrooms in a specific area. As television developed and more teachers became involved in designing or influencing the design of programming, many more subjects were covered that could be used in a variety of educational settings.
References
About Channel One (2007). Channel One News, About Us, Our Policies and Company Information, Viewed on September 26, 2007 from http://www.channelone.com/static/about/.
Bickham, D.S.; Vandewater, Elizabeth A.; Huston, A.C.; Lee, J.H.; Gillman Caplovitz, A., and Wright, J.C. (2003). Predictors of Children's Media Use: An Examination of Three Ethnic Groups. Media Psychology. 5(2):107-137.
Cuban, Larry (1986) Teahers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920, Teachers College Press, New York, N.Y. pp. 53, 66.
Dowling, Sherwood A. (1996). USA Internet Education: Reform or False Panacea?, National Museum of American Art. Presented at 6th Annual Conference of the Internet Society, Montreal, Canada. Viewed September 26, 2007 from http://www.isoc.org/inet96/proceedings/c1/c1_1.htm.
Goldfarb, Brian (2002) Visual Pedagogy: Media Cultures in and beyond the Classroom, Duke University Press, Durham, N.C. p. 3.
Means, B., Blando, J., Olson, K., Middleton, T., Morocco, C., Remz, A., and Zorfass, J. (1993). Using technology to support educational reform. Washington, D.C.: OERI, U.S. Department of Education. Viewed September 26, 2007 from http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/TechReforms/index.html.
Pinon, M. R., Huston, A. C., & Wright, J. C. (1989). Family ecology and child characteristics that predict young children’s educational television viewing. Child Development, 60, 846–856.
Reid-Wallace, Carolynn (1997). Study of School Uses of Television and Video. Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Publications, 901 E Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20004-2037
Zechowski, Sharon. "Museum of Broadcast Communications." 26 Sept. 2007 <http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/E/htmlE/educationalt/educationalt.htm>.
