Edutainment--Instructional Television

As far as Instructional Television in edutainment, I agree with Chan (2007) that movies about eras in history stimulate discussion and enhance the relevance of material covered by high school students. Movies about how things are made are good reference points about how the manufacturing process works. Movies about trades and construction are starting points for moving students into careers and occupations with promise.

I would like to see students move from initial movie watching to actually participating in the manufacturing process, the construction process, the trades process as part of the learning to work episodes of education in the future. Learning to work in the partnership and collaborative real world context is not merely a spectator sport but a hands-on lived experience that gives students the tools to reflect and make changes to how careers and occupations benefit the human society as lifelong activities versus mere discussion activities or test activities in the class.

The classroom should expand to the workplace where learning is transferred as an adult to give students the necessary 21st century skill sets to make a difference in their chosen occupations and careers. Experience is not something that should be lived after school. Experience should be an indelible part of school life that gives students context and comfort in how to handle day-to-day strife and stress of the real world.

Students should be able to document experience in movie form to add to their eportfolios while still in school. Internships, externships, and outside jobs help. But, they should not be the only focus. School must transform to pattern learning, occupational learning, that is a lifelong paradigm model to develop expertise not only for students but to create professional development opportunities for teachers to work in the real world and analyze real world problems in an effort to make the world a better place.

I like the idea of Instructional Television (University of Idaho, 1995) being used to take students to new environments like the moon, a foreign country, or through the lens of a microscope. What I like even more is the teaching of how to televise these new environments being taught to students and teachers in a collaborative environment. I like the idea of students and teachers training in sophisticated production facilities and equipment as part of the educational process. To watch Instructional Television and to produce Instructional Television are two different paradigms with two different experience portfolios that lead to two different outcomes.

Passively watching or even interactively watching Instructional Television is quite different from the complex mechanism of producing Instructional Television. I would like students and teachers to become producers more so than consumers of Instructional Television. In the production phase, the learning process is quite different and more complex in terms of collaboration and tweaking out effective instructional practices that work for all students. Students and teachers have the creative tone of how to convey ideas that will make a difference in other students’ and teachers’ lives. The skill sets are lifelong learning and discerning capacities that are nurtured from the context of learning “how to do something” rather than merely learning “about something.” The emphasis is on performance and demonstration, not on memorization and regurgitation. The skills are more transferable to other domains outside the Instructional Television setting.

Interactive TV (ITV) (Skelton, 2001) presents a more dynamic innovative and creative medium where viewers can be engaged in sophisticated ways. Discovery and National Geographic takes viewers throughout the globe in search of different species and phenomenon that harmoniously work in relation to other species and environmental factors. As part of the chain of life, we need to know how our actions mitigate or invigorate the life patterns of other species, the biosphere of our habitats, and the atmosphere of our health and physical well being. Interactive TV can help trace this chain of life and document its course and transformation.

References

Chan, S. (2007). Edutainment. Retrieved April 8, 2009, from http://design.test.olt.ubc.ca/Edutainment

Skelton, S. (2001). Edutainment—The integration of education and interactive television. Retrieved April 7, 2009, from http://www.naccq.ac.nz/con02/proceedings_2001/127.pdf
University of Idaho. (1995). Instructional television: Distance education at a glance, guide 5. Retrieved April 7, 2009, from http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/eo/guide5.pdf