Film and video are often associated with a classic instructional or transmission pedagogic approach, though even writers from the fifties such as Hoban and van Ormer did not see the teacher as the only source of knowledge. Hoban and van Ormer (1951) even suggested that appropriate video material could be as good as the teacher in communicating facts or demonstrating procedures. In other words, the learning of facts or concepts is not dealt primarily by the teacher transmitting information, but because of the interaction between the student and the moving image. However, his approach to teaching is still reminiscent of the transmission model, in that the teacher still has control and choice over the resources and over the time and place for the learning to take place.

Can you summarise the sections you have read? These sections describe how the moving visual presentations which originated as the ‘magic lantern' developed and influenced our life situations in the last over a course of a century. Over the course of a century, we have seen a succession of moving image technologies: film, television, videotapes, videodisks, digital desktop video, multimedia, CD-ROM, videoconferencing, interactive TV, and now web-based media. All were primarily developed for the business or entertainment sector then later found a place in education. This changing emphasis on the value of video is partly a case of educators seeing a new technical opportunity, but as we will see later, also highlights the influence of prevalent pedagogical theory in interpreting and sometimes reinventing tools developed for other purposes.