TELEVISION AS TEACHING MEDIA

MUHAMMAD FARKHAN FAUZI

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Nowadays, television has been owned by most of people in this digital era. It delivers so many information around the world. Television is an effective tool in expressing abstract concepts or ideas. Abstract concepts are usually produced and conveyed with words. Besides this, in making an abstract concept concrete, the role of animation and visual experimentation is very important. The limitation here is how to combine the text, which is involving information, with moving views, animation, concrete ideas, utterance and objects like pictures. Television in the learning process could be helpful in understanding abstract ideas directly (Bates, 1998, 215-217).

Television is especially useful for lessons like geography, because it enables us to see whatever possible to see (Turan, 1994, p. 160). Though production is a complicated process, the cost per person is low. (see Potashnik-Capper, 1998 for the cost comparison of distance education tools) All these features point out the superiority of television in the presentation of information. Besides these advantages, television has some serous disadvantages too which are listed below:

1. The experience of watching television has been competed against a lot of activities which a viewer can do whatever want to do at the same time. 
2. Each of the programs is compete against to the other programs which are broadcasted from other channels. 
3. The viewer can prefer shifting to other program(s) or to daily another activities instead of watching program if television program does not present any attracting or watchable subject for the viewer. (Mutlu 1995, pp. 21-22)

One of the important disadvantages of television is that it does not provide instant feedback. It’s too hard to capture the viewers’ reactions about the program. For this reason, the producer does not have a chance to control if the program is not watched by the viewer. In the meantime, broadcast television isn’t interactive. So that participating of the viewers are getting low. Producer is never forgetting these important disadvantages when producing an educational television program.

 

References :

Bates, A. W.(1998). “Television, Learning and Distance Education”. Journal of Educational Television. Vol.14, No.3, 213-225. 

Mutlu, Erol (1995).  Televizyonda Program Yapimi [Production at Television]. Ankara universitesi IBF Yayinlari, Ankara, Turkey. 

Potashnik, M.-Capper, J. ( March 1998) Distance Education: Growt and Diversity Table 2: Avarage cost Per number of students for each distance education technology Finance and Development, 35(1). http://www.worldbank.org/fandd/english/0398/articles/0110398.htm 

Turan, E. (1994). Medyanin Siyasi Hayata Etkileri [Effects of The Media To Politic Life]. Irfan Yayincilik, Istanbul, Turkey.