Why screens in schools—from film screenings to instructional television to personal computers—did not bring about the educational revolution promised by reformers. Long before Chromebook giveaways and remote learning, screen media technologies were enthusiastically promoted by American education reformers. Again and again, as schools deployed film screenings, television programs, and computer games, screen-based learning was touted as a cure for all educational ills. But the transformation promised by advocates for screens in schools never happened. In this book, Victoria Cain chronicles important episodes in the history of educational technology, as reformers, technocrats, public television producers, and computer scientists tried to harness the power of screen-based media to shape successive generations of students. Cain describes how, beginning in the 1930s, champions of educational technology saw screens in schools as essential tools for training citizens, and presented films to that end. (Among the films screened for educational purposes was the notoriously racist Birth of a Nation.) In the 1950s and 1960s, both technocrats and leftist educators turned to screens to prepare young Americans for Cold War citizenship, and from the 1970s through the 1990s, as commercial television and personal computers arrived in classrooms, screens in schools represented an increasingly privatized vision of schooling and civic engagement. Cain argues that the story of screens in schools is not simply about efforts to develop the right technological tools; rather, it reflects ongoing tensions over citizenship, racial politics, private funding, and distrust of teachers. Ultimately, she shows that the technologies that reformers had envisioned as improving education and training students in civic participation in fact deepened educational inequities.

Based on the premise that school facility design should actively encourage efficient and effective learning, this book explores key design decisions that have a crucial impact on the kind of student-teacher-media interactions which take place in all school rooms and open spaces. Topics addressed include learning space specifications; the conversion of learning specifications into architectural specifications; site planning and facility development; new facility costs and funding; indoor climate control, lighting, and acoustical control; instructional media technology requirements for effective and efficient learning; special-purpose facilities for more productive learning; and equipment acquisition for the learning environment. Appendices provide an evaluation of existing school facilities; a checklist for identifying facility requirements; a planning checklist; a summary of existing facilities and alternative uses of existing facilities; an architect selection checklist; and a list of carrel, furniture, and media suppliers. (Contains 38 references.) (GR)

Abstract: A textbook and reference manual for instructional material designers bridges the gap between research and practice in instructional message design. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the instructional problem and testing possible solutions and providing instructional designers with authoritative guidelines for choosing or creating effective forms of instruction from broadly applicable and reliable research findings and principles. The basis of the text resides with how people perceive, memorize, form concepts, and develop attitudes from exposures to instructional messages. (wz).