Science students of all ages and abilities are experiencing swirling tornadoes, colliding continents, and erupting undersea volcanos in their own classrooms. They travel to distant eras, become infinitesimally small to view the tiniest microbes, or grow gargantuan as they journey to distant galaxies. Has Orson Welles or Jules Verne been designing curriculum delivery vehicles? If they had, they might have designed videodiscs.
Videodiscs, aluminum plates containing a multitude of rich images, are one of the fastest growing tools for delivering instruction. The number of videodisc players in schools has more than doubled in the last year (“California Adopts...” 1993) as the result of several states' efforts to provide technologies to schools as an alternative to textbooks.
Texas was the first state to test the alternative format, with California and Florida following its lead. In the mid-1980s, Texas legislators, attempting to attract technology companies to the state, tried to make the state's education system more attractive to engineers and their families. They changed the definition of a textbook to include technology formats (ten Brink 1992), making Texas the first state to openly call for curriculum presented in electronic instructional media systems. In 1989, elementary science in Texas became the nation's first videodisc test case, using Windows on Science by Optical Data Corporation (Texas Education Agency 1989).
Texas made the new curriculum option available to approximately 1,100 school districts with approximately 3,600 campuses and 1.5 million students in grades 1–6. Sixty-five percent of the campuses in Texas chose some percentage of their textbook allotment in videodiscs. Schools began using the electronic instructional systems in September 1991. Districts, parent organizations, and community groups are now finding resources to buy additional hardware, software, and videodiscs.
Interacting with Video
The science classroom is the perfect environment for the experiment of teaching with videodisc technology because the heart of science education is the student's personal interaction with natural phenomena. In the classroom or in the field, hands-on activities make science concepts real for students.
Videodiscs provide teachers with rich material to enhance science instruction, displaying still shots, graphics, and film clips on monitors. Using videodiscs, students can now explore extreme weather conditions, physical forces, geological forces, time sequences, and biological factors much as if they were gathering laboratory and field data. Observing, classifying, collecting, and analyzing data, students relate the videodisc-generated activities to real-world applications.
Videodiscs make investigations possible that would otherwise be impractical. For example, students can study gravity by watching Astronaut David Scott (Apollo 15) drop a hammer and a feather on the moon, or they can watch various substances biodegrade through compressed time images (ten Brink and Mitchell 1992).
The videodiscs also provide alternative assessments because the students can interact with the videodiscs to answer questions and follow directions. In Wichita Falls Independent School District, students use videodiscs coupled with computers to study sound frequency. They listen to frequencies from the videodisc, drag icons along a scale, and then command the videodisc to play the sequence of tones they have designed. They receive immediate feedback to check their understanding.
Students look to us to prepare them for an increasingly technological world. Fortunately, with videodiscs, we are meeting the challenge by delivering curriculums in ways that engage, motivate, and thrill our students. Our students will have the skills, concepts, and tools they will need to face the ultimate science field experience—entering the 21st century.
