MEDIA AND MATERIALS
MANIPULATIVES
Real objects-such as coins, tools, artifacts, plants, and animals-are some of the most accessible, intriguing, and involving materials in educational use. They are known as manipulative because students may handle and inspect them.
Example:
The collection of Colonial era coins, frogs dissected in the college biology, laboratory, the real baby being bathed in the parenting class-these are just a few examples of the potential of real objects to elucidate the obscure and to stimulate the imagination.
Verbalism
Verbalism is a term that refers to parroting words without meaningful understanding.
To build schemata that have meaning and relevance in their lives, learners need a base in concrete experience, and bringing real objects into the classroom can help in this.
Cutaways : Devices such as machines with one side cut away to allow close observation of the inner workings
Specimens : Actual plants, animals, or parts thereof preserved for convenient inspection
Exhibits : Collections of artifacts, often of a scientific or historical nature, brought together with printed information to illustrate a point
Advantages
> Means of presenting information, raising question, and providing hands on learning experiences.
> Play a valuable role in the valuation phase of instruction.
> Learners can identify, classify, describe their functioning, discuss their utility, or compare and contrast them.
> Emphasizes the real-world application of the topic of study, aids transfer of training, and helps transcend the merely verbal level of training.
Models
Models are three-dimensional representations of real objects. A model may be larger, smaller, or the same size as the object it represents. It may be complete in detail or simplified for instructional purposes.
Advantages:
> Appeals to children of all ages
> Stimulate inquiry and discovery
> Helps sharpen both cognitive and psychomotor skills
FIELD TRIPS
The field trip, an excursion outside the classroom to study real processes, people, and objects, often grows out of students' need for firsthand experiences. It makes it possible for students to encounter phenomena that cannot be brought into the classroom for observation and study.
Examples of field trips include a trip of a few minutes into the schoolyard to observe a tree, a trek across the street to see construction work, or a longer trip of several days to tour historical locations. Popular field trip sites include zoos, museums, public buildings, and parks.
Dale's Cone of Experience
Places field trips toward the middle of the cone because, although the experience is "real," students typically are only seeing and hearing the phenomena, not directly manipulating them.
PRINTED MATERIALS
Printed materials include textbooks, fiction and non- fiction books, booklets, pamphlets, study guides, manuals, and worksheets, as well as word processed documents prepared by students and teachers. Text- books have long been the foundation of classroom instruction. The other forms of media discussed in this book are frequently used in conjunction with and as supplements to printed materials.
Advantages
> Availability. Printed materials are readily available on a variety of topics and in many different formats.
> Flexibility. They are adaptable to many purposes and may be used in any lighted environment.
> Portability. They are easily carried from place to place and do not require any equipment or electricity.
> User-friendly. Properly designed printed materials are easy to use, not requiring special effort to "navigate" through.
> Economical. Printed materials are relatively inexpensive to produce or purchase and can be reused. In fact, some may be obtained free, as described in the next section.
FREE AND INEXPENSIVE MATERIALS
With the ever-increasing costs of instructional materials, teachers and trainers should be aware of the variety of materials they may obtain for classroom use at little or no cost. These free and inexpensive materials can supplement instruction in many subjects; they can be the main source of instruction on certain topics. For example, many videotapes are available for loan without a rental fee; the only expense is the return postage. By definition, any material that you can borrow or acquire permanently for instructional purposes without a significant cost, usually less than a couple of dollars, can be referred to as free or inexpensive.
Advantages
> Up to date. Free and inexpensive materials can provide up-to-date information that is not contained in textbooks or other commercially available media.
> In depth treatment. Such materials often provide in-depth treatment of a topic. If classroom quantities are available, students can read and discuss printed materials as they would textbook material. If quantities are limited, you can place them in a learning center for independent or small-group study.
> Variety of uses. These materials lend themselves to your own classroom presentations. Individual students who want to explore a subject of interest can use the audiovisual materials for self-study or for presentation to the class.
> Student manipulation. Materials that are expendable have the extra advantage of allowing learners to get actively involved with them. For example, students can cut out pictures for notebooks and displays. They can assemble printed information and visuals in scrapbooks as reports of individual and group projects.
DISPLAY SURFACES
> Chalkboards
Once called blackboards, they now come in a variety of colors, as does chalk. You can use it as a surface on which to draw visuals (or pictures can be fastened to the molding above the chalk- board, taped to the board with masking tape, or placed in the chalk tray) to help illustrate instructional units
> Multipurpose Boards
They are also called whiteboards or marker boards. As the name implies, you can use them for more than one purpose.
> Copy Boards
A high-tech variation of the multipurpose board is the copy board, or electronic whiteboard. This device makes reduced-size paper copies of what is written on the board. It looks like a smaller multipurpose board but may contain multiple screens or frames that can be scrolled forward and backward
> Pegboards
Are made of tempered Masonite with 1/8 inch holes drilled 1 inch apart. It is particularly useful for displaying heavy objects, three dimensional materials and visuals.
> Bulletin Boards
the term bulletin board implies a surface on which bulletins-brief news announcements of urgent interest- are posted for public notice.
> Cloth Boards
Are constructed of cloth stretched over a sturdy backing material such as plywood, Masonite, or heavy cardboard.
> Magnetic Boards
Serve much the same purpose as cloth boards.
> Flip Charts
is a pad of large paper fastened together at the top and mounted to an easel.
> Exhibits
are collections of various objects and visuals designed to form an integrated whole for instructional purposes.
> Display
Is an array of objects, visuals, and printed materials.
> Dioramas
Are static displays consisting of a three-dimensional foreground and a flat back- ground to create a realistic scene.
Comments
Post a Comment