Video based instruction is based on the premise that ‘seeing is believing; seeing is understanding; and seeing is learning'. For example in a teacher training situation, videos furnish models of desired practice, provide implementation guidance, spark ideas, and increase understanding of difficult-to-explain procedures or processes. To paraphrase a famous American baseball player, teachers ‘can observe a lot by watching'.

This section focuses on televisual models of distance education with some examples from professional development of teachers. ‘Televisual' includes such visual broadcast media as television, video, and videoconferencing. Televisually based distance education is often used to show teachers real teacher-student interactions in the classroom, thus enabling them to observe the management of learning activities. In this respect the uses of radio and television for teacher professional development can be contrasted: whereas radio often is used to guide teachers through scripted activities, television shows teachers images of teachers and students in action (Gaible and Burns, 2007: 50).

Television

Though expensive, television has tremendous reach and enjoys the advantage of being a familiar and engaging visual medium. As such, television has for decades been well established as a distance education mode providing high-quality content and instructional techniques for pre-service, in-service, and continuing teacher education as well as learning by children. 

Teachers have participated in television-based professional development in their homes; in their classrooms; or, in areas where television is not widely available, such as in viewing centres. Indeed, the largest distance education program in the world, Shanghai Television University, is television- based.

Television's strengths include the power to engage viewers, to present conceptual information visually, and to show real people doing real things in environments both local and international. Television can support professional development by giving teachers opportunities to observe other teachers as they implement new instructional practices. By enabling teachers to anticipate what will happen, television reduces the risks inherent in experimentation (Gaible and Burns 2007, 50).

Internet protocol television (IPTV)

Television as we know it is rapidly changing. The experience of watching television is fast becoming less time- and place-based, more personalised, and more platform-varied. In many countries, like the United States, the rate of television ownership is dropping as the "television experience" shifts inexorably to the World Wide Web via on-demand Internet streaming. Though this change is occurring everywhere, it is most pronounced in Asia, particularly in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. In 2009 Indonesia began to distribute TV Edukasi via the Internet in a program called TV Online, through which television programming is offered 24 hours a day and can travel over minimum bandwidth speed of 256 Kbps.

Internet protocol television (IPTV) is a system where a digital television service is delivered using the internet protocol (IP) over a network infrastructure, which may include delivery by a broadband connection. Digital television (DTV) is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound by means of digital signals, in contrast to analogue signals in analogue (traditional) TV. It uses digital modulation data, which is digitally compressed and requires decoding by a specially designed television set or a standard receiver with a set-top box.

Blu-ray players, and game consoles, there promises to be an explosion of offerings and formats that, though geared toward consumers in the short term, will undoubtedly impact television as a distance learning mode in the medium and long term. In 2010, both Apple and Google launched Apple TV and Google TV respectively. Google TV is a software platform that allows users to download Internet videos as well as cable television programs and consolidate them all in the same place. Google TV includes Google's search engine, so that viewers do not need to watch programs as they are broadcast, but rather can search for video content on their television or on the Web and then view it on their television, computer, or other mobile device at their convenience. Time-shifting technologies such as digital video recorders (DVRs) allow users to view television programs at a time of their choosing. In addition, place-shifting technologies such as Slingbox.com, which stream content from home televisions to a tablet, laptop, or phone in another location, allow users to view programs far from home.

Video

Whether it is used to support students or teachers, recorded video offers numerous advantages over television as a mode of distance learning for teachers. Using videos, teacher training entities can re-use and control viewing and transmission schedules and control the rate of presentation through freeze-frame, pause, rewind, and other options, thereby enabling viewing to be interspersed with discussion or specific sequences to be repeated. Once confined to hard disks that could be mailed from one location to another, video technology now enjoys prominence on the World Wide Web. Sites such as TeacherTube and SchoolTube contain numerous classroom and activity-based videos that, with the proper professional development and expert facilitation, could serve as in- and pre-service teacher education tools.

The chapter you read provides a number of experiences of using television in different ways in the educational context especially in teacher training. Let us review one of those case studies.

You would have considered the different formats and styles of videos used in the Chinese Television Instruction. You also would have considered the possibility of supporting learners though face-face contact locally. This would have taken care of the need for human interactivity in the programme.