What are the Advantages and Limitations of Educational Television?

Advantages of Educational Television:

(1) Television experience, which is a combination of sound and picture received instantaneously on the TV screen, it comes closer than any other contrived experience to that of real it)’.

(2) Television makes it possible for the talents of the best teachers to be put at the disposal of all schools.

(3) Television can employ all other audio and visual aids and combine their effectiveness in the air medium. Pictures, charts, films, micro slides, graphs, boards, overhead projector can all be employed in the technique of teaching by TV.

(4) Educational authorities can produce TV lessons made to their own requirements for specific local needs.

(5) The TV teacher is more real because of his frequent visual appearance in the classroom.

In the classroom TV can be advantageously used to:

(1) Broaden and enrich the classroom learning experiences of the students.

(2) Create genuine interest in the topic or the subject that is being taught.

(3) Evaluate the quality of classroom teaching process.

(4) To provide a wide variety of experiences, those are quite different from the routine classroom-instruction.

(5) Stimulate less passive slow learners by developing a more critical approach in them.

(6) Provides opportunity to learn, to create productions that can improve students ability to communicate.

Limitations of Educational Television:

(1) Because of no individual contact no further action is possible other than viewing and listening. This can be overcome by organizing a kind of group discussion between instructors and learners soon after the programme.

(2) The learners may engage in day dreaming, during the programme, this can be overcome by cautioning the students in advance that a follow-up discussion will be held after the programme.

(3) There is absence of learner participation during the programme. It is a one way communication.

(4) The programme cannot be adapted to individual learners. It can only be adapted to particular group if their needs are identified and defined earlier.

(5) There is dissimilarity in the intellectual background of the learners and the TV programme does not cater to it. This can be overcome by instructors giving additional background information before the programme enabling everybody to follow it.

(6) The lesson timings are inflexible and sometimes inconvenient.

(7) The class teacher has no control over the pace of development of a TV lesson.

(8) It is difficult to take account of variation in attainment and ability within an age group.

(9) Interruptions and distractions at the receiving end can seriously impair the effectiveness of a lesson.

(10) The effectiveness of any transmitted aid is limited to the range of the transmitter.

(11) Teachers may consider Television’s all absorbing quality in some way restrictive, in that pupils participation is discouraged although not prevented entirely.

Television programmes may be made on:

(1) Teaching demonstrations

(2) Recordings of student’s performance

(3) Recordings of teacher’s performance

(4) Micro teaching in teacher’s performance

(5) Image magnification for demonstrations

(6) Records of field trips

(7) Career counselling programmes

(8) Critical community problems

(9) Technical training taps

(10) Guest speakers files