Educational Media and Human Needs

Abstract

Mr Ide asked the audience to consider the present multiplicity of technological devices available to satisfy the need for communication in the teaching process. To what extent were they capable of answering to the individual's need for significance and identity in our complex society? He pointed to the difficulty many teachers had in using the new technology in a genuinely innovative way. We first had to form a judgment on what the individual's basic needs in communication were before we could adequately make use of the new technology. He expressed these needs in personal terms, such as affection, recognition and an experience of success. Quoting from Mark Slade's Language of Change he summarised the situation thus: 'Our big problem in this century is to restore to human beings, emancipated by technology, the person-to-person touch that technology steadily removes from human intercourse'. He then illustrated his points with examples of films and tapes used in his programmes in Ontario. He particularly emphasised the importance of student participation in the creative activity represented by television workshops. In this instance the process was more significant than the product.