thumbnail of Amang the Scots; ETV action in Glasgow
Transcript
Hide -
If this transcript has significant errors that should be corrected, let us know, so we can add it to FIX IT+
Thanks. Today and our sixth report from Scotland we will hear about the use of educational television in the city schools. A university and a college of education in the city of Glasgow directors of the various television services will
explain why and how they are using television. On my arrival here on a Fulbright assignment I was somewhat surprised to discover that there were seven educational television projects getting underway in the city of Glasgow. In fact the educational supplement of the London Times referred to this area as the volcanic bout with respect to educational television. There was little question that the city was far in front of any other in the United Kingdom if not in Europe. However these services were either just beginning our had been underway only a very short time. I felt that the story of this development which is somewhat unique with respect to a single city might be of interest. And so I arranged to record the comments of the TV service directors regarding their purposes and programs. We will hear from three of them today. First we are to hear briefly the story of television in the Glasgow City
schools. It has been my pleasure to be associated with the director of the service WC big during my stay here he has a very fine sense of humor and a delightful Scottish accent and he had come to the television service with a background in educational films. I asked him first to explain how and why this service started. Rab radiated the concept of an education no doubt the visions of those which would meet the needs of Blair's a good school Rose added. For better education coverage is it good to have a demonstration going to it in January 1963 by the Scottish educational film Association and by a limited. Now the eve of this demonstration was to show how all this relatively cheap camera as a minimum I was given due to equipment no less and could be successfully transmitted
by people from one classroom to another. The demonstration was successful enough and made it by but it would appear that they contributed a little bit a little to the silly ocean of Glasgow's of most pressing educational problem. It was felt by all of us that got much more profitable field of experimentally and closed the television if you could call it that was the area of television you know about A-Rod setting up a service for teachers by teachers with a central studio which could originate the directed you program to most ardent then this goes on transmit them to every school and college in the city to investigate their policy is to investigate the possibilities of this kind of Savvas letters about education about it they carried out an experiment in April 1963.
In that experiment the microwave trims that data was set up a little for one of its college years and three programs each of them lasting all but I know what a being that relates to the city chambers that city council house and to our secondary school sound alright miles away and the Potomac that of the city the programs that I write but I had the subject and represented by members of the Glasgow teaching staff and the city's through universities and colleges of education and the demonstration that were seen by roughly a thousand people. Education this teacher's education office officials and so on draw not only from Glasgow but from the west of Scotland. Indeed the experiment was interesting enough to attract visitors from England and from a lot of the Maryland. Well it seemed to be here that
they found a demonstration and outstanding success and there was the unanimous approval of LED grow education committee began almost immediately on the detail of the planning and custom. But ends up set after these plans were submitted. The Glasgow Corporation decided to act and then followed a rather impressive technical achievement in laying more than 100 miles of cable which serviced three hundred fifteen Glasgow schools and all this done in a rather limited time. A small staff with the Stars assembled in the spring of 1960 five and worked intensively in pre paring for the opening in that fall. Mr Beaton now tells us about you know the set of US Open and happy about this 1965. Where do we see it
in Egypt Ogram run was my daughter met them at the second EPA Boros they have never once spoken French to primary people. The. Senators had two very clearly defined aims in Deal The first was to compliment the day basic day to day work of the schools through their teaching but Ogram was deliberately given current piecing to school schemes of work. The second was to provide a continuing in service training of teachers in the rapidly changing content and methods. But so many other curricular subjects achieve these objectives and at the same time to give substance to a slogan we have thought up I need DV So as far teachers and ballet teachers would like to think
about us as that need to be said as part teachers by teachers. Well to give substance to that slogan the selection of subjects the preparation of scripts and the presentation of a program to a place very friendly in the hands of teachers. It was the responsibility of the studio staff to go out to meet this rock and distribute it through the technicalities of production. Now one of the open EDV said this with a mathematic program when the decision to open that was pretty mathematics but our grams but we were speaking because many specialist teachers are placed at the present time with the problem of hire bands to equip themselves for coping with the new topics and teaching techniques of modern mathematics. How successful was this first year of operation of a city wide close circuit system.
Well here's Mr. Beaton statement summarizing the situation with good up to quite an encouraging style at the studio and critics. After seven months of operation only seven out of a total of apparent transmissions have been lost through a breakdown of equipment at the reception and most of the Phelps report a first rate cut 10 days rather minor one the red you are due and familiarity on the part of the cheers or the control now are on the modified receivers now. As you could guess at these rallies a limited often by instructions given over the phone. The other more serious ones are systematically tackled by a team of engineers. Now since then one of two modifications have been introduced into the distribution system to secure an even better
picture and sound quality so that I think I could say now that from a technical point of view. We achieving really promising results now educationally. Well I will see again that he is out equally promising feedback from school suggests. But for the most part programmes have been pretty well received by pupils and teachers alike. Criticism has been consistently constructive and it naturally has helped us considerably in preventing early mistakes in production and presentation from being a repeated meter program. You know as well as I do or that devising a system a free bag is one thing ensuring that it reflects teacher's opinion accurately is another. Now by establishing as many lines of communication
with this coverage as possible we're hoping to give teachers an opportunity of playing the park and assessing the value of programs and suggesting changes in content and treatment. The TV rests at the moment it is fully stretched to meet its commitments and friends mathematics and Cuisinart But we're optimistic about expansion and so in the bright light programme series in sixth form science health education social studies and religious education. If these are to be produced of course a second studio will be necessary. At this moment the education committee examining our report only additional staff and equipment required to solve this very problem.
Let's turn now. To the University of Glasgow and learn about its interest and plans for a TV to get the story. I talked with the director of the TV service Mr. Roderick MacLean. How does one go about introducing television for instructional purposes on a university campus when the attitude at first anyway usually is somewhat anti television. But here is Mr. McLean statement concerning his approach to the problem. I bet President Bush right from the beginning was that we were not. Thinking of taking into the universe the complete framework of television as we know it. If there's one thing more likely to trigger off resistance to educational television and another that is their core set of in Washington or reactions
that academic people associate with television as they've known it at home or white they argue with some of us some of its educators as a big part in some of its entertainment so what are some of the professors some of this broadcast television professes to be educational. And when we look at it what we find we find it superficial. We find it skims off the cream that it never deals in any sort of depth with any subject worth tackling. And if that's what television means we don't want it in new and the university that underlying reaction had to be overcome. How does one overcome it. But I don't mind running around and speaking to departments. I try to overcome it by telling myself that so far as education is concerned so far as a university education in Glasgow and 965 is concerned television is new it has just happened. It hasn't got all these associations
but the entertainment world. So let's pretend this is the case and look at television from scratch. If it really anywhere and you got what we say it's uses where in the world of education. I then asked Mr Maclean to explain what he considered to be the major uses of television on the university campus. I had managed to my own satisfaction to group the users under four headings. They're not of course mutually exclusive headings but I'd look at them. I tell myself and my colleagues that the vision has for capacities and education the capacity to magnify and distribute the capacity to relay to relay board sound and vision somewhat tenuously the capacity to
record and store and the capacity to assemble. No even before I go on to explain in greater detail what I mean by each of these capacities. Let's make it clear that none of these capacities is new. None of them has arrived for the first time with television. There's nothing essentially revolutionary in what television offers. That may be a bit new as there are variety of groupings that these capacities offer the permutations of the groupings. Now I'm getting a bit ahead of myself because I haven't actually explained in detail what I mean by these capacities. So back to the first one the capacity to magnify it and the structures. But of course me being magnifying on that idea was distributing since the year dot. We've been magnifying their the microscope we've been
magnifying with the epididymis crop and so on. And what's wrong with them. Absolutely nothing was wrong with them except that and there are various ways that limited the microscope. Magnifies. But it usually magnify it for one man at a time when astronomers there they knew were student this concern that often magnifies and accurately it often magnifies the student's imagination rather than what it should actually be looking at and actually be seeing. Television with an association with existing visual aids like the microscope and its own degree of magnification can take the object so magnified it right around in the large lecture room alarms or for that matter a set of lecture rooms and delivered to each individual student. The Fortean tell a joke or picture that the demonstrator the lecturer wants him to see the
capacity to relay and I've given it my second capacity. Now once again there's nothing new about the capacity of the of it we've been able to relay inside him for long enough and I delayed sense of trust we've been able to relay by film. In fact the capacity instantaneously to relay Sound and Vision is just about the only completely new thing that television doesn't offer. The remake of past day comes and higher education in a variety of ways let's tick a few of them off the list. There is a very straightforward question of relaying an object to use in it as elsewhere of course elsewhere in the
lecture room and it may be too small or too hot or too dangerous too inaccessible to take a whole class to see. Again not television with a capital T but offering an immense range of possibilities even around a single university here. Let's take one simple example that is already in practice. We have a vastly expensive computer. I was in a room built to accommodate the computer not built to accommodate students. We do in practice relay their rankings of the computer in the main you just detail to it and what lecture rooms so that a whole class of students can see and understand the mechanical workings at least of the computer which they're never likely to see in
person. Still in the relay category it is run on the most important uses that we've been making of television so far. It's in the medical field and that embraces a whole group of medical situations in which there is an intimate exchange of views between patient and doctor can be relayed to a larger group of students. This situation may arise in the strip I would medical field where a patient is being interviewed examined in bed in the hospital their old fashioned possibility has been of course that you take as large a group of students as may be around the bed and two or three in the front row may derive some benefit from their clinical examination. Not more. We know it take out
cameras and do a side room on the ward and from there and relay it to a group of students elsewhere. Their position as neither unbiased nor excited or upset by having too many people running is bad for the students themselves Accorsi in far greater detail than for their symptoms that are important clinically The doctor probably is at his most natural too. With one name one common man present Incidentally we found that patients of all kinds do adapt with remarkable speed to the presence of a couple of cameras on the camera. He surprises me in fact in a matter of seconds almost the handwritten note the kind of man who sent me back to the furniture. Mr. McLean then went on to explain two other major uses of television as
he saw them. The next was the capacity to record and star in addition to the multiple uses for recording. He thinks that the mobile unit will really come into its own when used in combination with a video tape recorder. Finally let's hear what he considers to be the fourth major use of television in the university. The capacity that I value in an educational television is what I think of as the capacity to assemble. Now of course this is a shorthand expression and it means nothing without a word of explanation. Many of my lectures essentially arguments that are based upon evidence which we don't present evidence which a student is simply asked to accept and often address to produce the evidence in the lecture room. Just wouldn't be practicable if we were to produce the evidence even and mother the detail. It would involve bringing in perhaps several other speakers and
charts and models and bits of film and prints from an old book and so on and on every one of them would add to the clumsiness of one's presentation. Many of them in any case wouldn't be fully visible and element. Then that whole collection would be likely to create more and more distraction from the very thing that you're pursuing. So that as a practical proposition presenting the evidence in the conventional teaching battened. Is something that just one rock. But if you take their fairly straightforward example of a medical lecture on a given element then you begin to see the pattern of what I mean by TV's capacity to assemble. Let's say about the class a class of medicals as studying
toxic conditions. Well right to begin with that I took people to specialists who have a right. To speak about toxic conditions as the medical man because one way of approaching the ailment is on a purely medical basis. There's the surgeon because another perfectly acceptable approach to the condition this century. Should certainly be there. And books are not just and other medical specialists all of whom. Themselves have the most valid things to say about this particular condition. Straight away then you have an argument for at least some of the group teaching at least an assembly of various specialists. Each of whom contributes his own significant pride to the study of the of the whole condition. But such an
assembly of people such into teaching in the normal classroom situation would be clumsy a little embarrassing perhaps. And in any of his universe detained people simply don't make that kind of thing possible. A television studio does pre-recording does you collect your specialists when they're available and you mold them into one single presentation. But that's only thinking of people. What about the temperature charts. What about the stills and the film that show the progress of the disease over the months and years. What about perhaps the personal experience the personal report of the invalid who reports how it feels to suffer. I thought of toxic condition but perhaps about the comment of his near relations who have to live with them and put up with the vagaries of temperament to go with the condition of these. Can getting possibility is to read your study up on just one medical
element. One couldn't possibly assemble all these in the lecture room and wouldn't even try one term assemble them in a television studio and present them in one cluttered focus of attention which is the monitor. One of the interesting by products in the use of television for instruction has been the stimulation of cooperative efforts on the part of the instructional staff. This is well illustrated in the experience of the science division of Notre Dame College of Education here in Glasgow. We hear now a brief statement on this point from Sister Marie Josephine science and instructor in the college and the one who was mainly responsible for our initial efforts in the use of television and who has recently been made director of the television service. It's. Good television seems to be going to happen with expenses.
At first it was a way of getting at the masses and. What people sometimes call an extra periscope. But we found that in least Sunstein great example is the one. Mode a much better team spirit would have to work together. And on the point of us Ronald Lee gives a lesson but only five have to follow up with their short tutorial sessions with the students afterwards when apprehensive of the effect of place on the students and when we're not particularly anxious to put ourselves on television and to cheer him on when he's doubtless rather well known their business shyness modesty if you like that. We have Channel 2 in the past but changing was a thing. Then in private she went into a room and you close the door and there it did not complicitous of any description. But now at least not in one of the members of the staff and the first thing that was said to me was
Oh dear I don't molest the star to say meeting with standards but. When we got a lot of problems I think that sort of a spirit of. In this mystery together shall we say playing well he added she with the good comes out of a density show and it didn't help us at the beginning and. When we got used to the idea about other people seeing us we pulled ourselves is much better. Each week we have to have a team meeting. In fact last year for the first year we were around timetables for science teaching. We had two team meetings 2000 conferences a week a time table for in the in the Science Room. With me to discuss down the points we were going to place so that when students
came to ask us questions with only around the last of the time I had to be responsible for the children's student's questions why we had to be healthy and we had to order material in the ground and equipment back sort of material we wanted to use some of it. Much better. Now the money goes and does our own debate inside a classroom by itself. You have just heard a report on the use of television. In the schools colleges and universities. Roscoe Scott. This is the sixth in our series of reports from Glasgow and I invite you to be with us in the next program. We will consider the sort of stuff.
This is where you're hearing among the stopped. This program was distributed by a national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.
Series
Amang the Scots
Episode
ETV action in Glasgow
Producing Organization
WOSU (Radio station : Columbus, Ohio)
Ohio State University
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-542jbh5w
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-542jbh5w).
Description
Episode Description
Educational television development in Scotland.
Series Description
A documentary series about modern Scotland.
Date
1967-07-12
Topics
Education
Film and Television
Race and Ethnicity
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:57
Embed Code
Copy and paste this HTML to include AAPB content on your blog or webpage.
Credits
Host: Goldovsky, Boris
Producing Organization: WOSU (Radio station : Columbus, Ohio)
Producing Organization: Ohio State University
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 67-26-6 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:57
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Amang the Scots; ETV action in Glasgow,” 1967-07-12, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-542jbh5w.
MLA: “Amang the Scots; ETV action in Glasgow.” 1967-07-12. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-542jbh5w>.
APA: Amang the Scots; ETV action in Glasgow. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-542jbh5w