Technology in Education. 5 Varieties of Media

By the term “technology in education” is meant application of machines, gadgets or equipment to improve the quality of education.   This aspect is described as the “hardware” approach to educational technology. It involves the use of pieces of instructional materials (media) such as audio media, visual media, projected media, graphics, computers and other teaching machines. It is important to note that hardware/machines are means through which information are extracted from their corresponding software.

Audio Media

These are teaching-learning devices that appeal to the auditory sense. They consist of radio sets; audio recording machines such as audiotapes, disc machines, telephone and walkie-talkie.

Visual Media as Technology in Education

These are instructional media that appeal to the sense of seeing (eyes). Most graphics are in this family of instructional media. They include: pictures, photographs, diagrams, charts and cartoons, still pictures such as slides, filmstrips and transparencies.

Audio-visual Media

These are instructional materials that have the capacity to provide issues in form of pictures and audio effect, in form of commentaries on the pictures simultaneously. Examples of media in this category of technology in education are: the television, videotape player, filmstrip/slides with in-built or synchronized sound.

Broadcast / Telecommunication Media

These are media through which information is disseminated usually to the mass of people / audience that are scattered over a wide distance. Common among the family of mass media are: the radio, the television, and the newspapers. The two former ones are in electronic forms while the latter is the printed form.

Projected Media

Commonly used technology in education, projected media belong to a group of instructional resources which can only be accessed by means of projecting their content on the screen/wall using a projector machine specifically designed for the purpose. Therefore, projected media are usually a combination of software and the corresponding hardware. You may have watched a cinema or a film in a cinema house or at some gathering.

Recall that there was an equipment/machine that was used to propel a scroll of film. In addition, you will recall that the machine was energized through a power source – direct current or the use of a generator. Your experience has provided you with all that we can use to explain the meaning of projected media. From your experience, consider the machine that was used to propel the scroll of the film as the “hardware”. The “film” which contains the content or the message to be disseminated is referred to as the software

What we need to know is that all projected media are designed to be transmitted on the screen through the use of projectors. Examples of such projectors are: slide projector, overhead projector, video projector, 16mm projector, 8mm projector, 35mm projector, filmstrip projector, opaque projector among others. It should be pointed out that most of the named projectors are fast becoming obsolete due to technological advancement and the advent of computer age.

Pictures of the under listed projected equipment are as shown below:

(i)        8 mm projector

(ii)       Overhead projector

(iii)      Computers

(iv)      Audiotape player/recorder (v)        Videotape player/recorder