FILMS IN EDUCATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 140, 15 June 1932, Page 13

FILMS IN EDUCATION.

UNIVERSITY EXPERIMENT. SYNCHRONISED LECTURES. HELP IN PHYSICAL SCIENCES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FEANCISCO, May 24. Talking motion pictures are at the door of the college classroom. The University of Chicago will begin production shortly on a series of twenty films on the physical sciences. Next autumn they will be the basis of study in its freshman class and will be sold to other colleges, high schools and educational groups for class presentation. Later the movies will invade every branch of study. Kobert Maynaid Hutchins, 33-year-old president of the University of Chicago, who has announced several revolutionary plans since taking office in 1929, described the latest contribution "to the experimental tradition of this university." Four years were required to perfect it. "Wc are not going into the entertainment business." he said, "and we arc not trying to jazz up education. This will be the first organised attempt of any university to find out what talking pictures can contribute to classroom work. We expect to extend it to all branches of the university, to our courses in adult education and to many of the 2200 other institutions which use our new system of instruction."

The life" of a plant, spanning six months, will be shown in ten minutes to the accoropanimerit of a synchronised lecture by a famous botanist of the university's faculty. A delicate, expensive experiment in electro-statics can be filmed once under perfectly <lry atmospheric conditions to the accompaniment of a verbal description by a well-known physicist, and thus Ik> made available for use at any time, or repeated as often as desired, in any classroom. Pictures r.iJJ be taken of phenomena, which cannot be seen by the naked eye. and then fhov.ii simultaneously, to hundreds of students, who at present are compelled to line no and take tedious turns at a microscope.