You know some things are so big that you just can't see them.
Some things are so small you can't see them ie they're some things move so fast
that no I can fully
that you have to have more patience than an educator has to teach people to see
them some things are hard to understand
and some things can't be learned by reading.
That's what this film is about the problems in teaching
and all of these problems
and many others I think just did in education for many years.
Teachers everywhere
and teachers of every kind of subject matter has sought the answers.
I suspect are closer to finding the answers today than ever before.
Simply because more people are thinking about educated been thinking about it
seriously
and motivated by a desire to really do something about it than ever before in the
history of our nation.
We've come to understand more vividly than ever before
that education is something more than a service we owe every young American
that it may be a vital factor in our national survival
that brain power is a force that has the world significance.
Perhaps this is the most important than the most beneficial outcome of all of this
talk of critical times in education that more of us are thinking about it
and more of us are looking for ways to improve the techniques of education teachers
and members of the community alike. Of course.
And as we think about improving techniques characteristically of the world in which
we live.
We think of using new communications devices with our overloaded teachers
and our overloaded curricula with the many new things.
There are to Dejan a complex society it makes sense to reach out
and employ the new technology in the sense that inventions
or new films really aren't new some kind of Motion Pictures of been used in
American classrooms for many years
and indeed this is one of the great assets of the audio visual teaching technique
in the instructional materials attached to it.
They've been around for a long long time.
There's a large body of knowledge a large body of materials
and a large body of skilled people who've learned to use them
and they're willing
and anxious to teach others to use them here in Wilmette in this Midwestern town
where I sit now in my office.
I'm surrounded by people who have been making these films for thirty years.
And to spend their time seeking ways to make the unique contribution
that is the goal of the classroom film.
Typical problem they face is teaching teachers to teach the answers to questions
that young people are asking these days about the newest phenomena of our society
orbits rockets satellites.
Now I have on my desk a rock at our model of a rocket.
It's a real rocket this is a matter of fact there's a real rocket motor
and if I loaded it and fueled it properly. I could put it into R.
but It's a three stage rocket.
And my failure to get the last two stages apart there's probably characteristic of
what might happen in many classrooms.
But it would be a difficult thing for me to explain to you sitting here using just
this model
or a genuine rocket how this rocket came to life how it might be fired in such a
way as to really go into orbit and what that aura
but would look like I'd have to take your mind's eye to some point in outer space
and let you look at the world just as we have learned to do in films with the
miracle of animation. Like.
But you look at the world and see meaningfully
and we will see in the first clip in this film.
What an orbit looks like and what it means
when we say Iraq it goes into orbit.
So powers there's a tremendously high mountain above the earth's atmosphere where
there's no friction with air. So part of that on Earth.
There is a gun or shot will soon be pulled to worth by gravity.
Even though its speed is not reduced by air friction.
If we use more power so sharp will travel farther before it's called the world.
But a charge that's just big enough.
We'll send a shot just fast enough so
that the curve of its drop is exactly the same as the curve of the earth since
we've assumed that we are above air friction speed isn't reduced.
Therefore the shop returns to the point where it was fired with the same speed.
It started with
and so continues to circle the earth indefinitely as a satellite.
The fuel in the large pre-dated burns out after about two
and a half minutes sending the rocket very high.
Then the first stage is left behind as the second stage takes over.
In ten or atmosphere with less gravity.
The second stage greatly it has the speed
and height of the rock at this stage often contains the guiding devices
that put the rocket into the correct path for launching the satellite.
Now the nose cone is released it protected the satellite against the extreme heat
of air friction.
A motor makes the satellite spin to give it stability with the rocket at the
necessary hide.
The final stage fires briefly to produce the great speed needed for orbit.
The satellite is then a jacket and Apollo has gone well
and goes into orbit with the rocket casing trailing out
you get some idea of the vexing nature of the teachers problem when you realize
that some things just aren't easy to explain.
Try telling a child for example that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
But when you ask him next Friday on the quiz he'll tell you
that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
But the chances are he doesn't know what he's saying
and doesn't really understand the process.
Here's where the educational filmmaker really gets his best licks and.
He uses the magic of time lapse photography taking action that takes hours
and days weeks and months
and compressing it into a meaningful few moments he uses animation
and extreme close up and photo microgravity and he turns an event
that can have meaning unless you press them dissipate in it
and observe it yourself into one that has a deep educational significance.
Let's see how he does this in the climactic few seconds from a film called The
Monarch butterfly story.
Watch closely now for you are about to witness one of nature's grandest dramas.
This indescribably beautiful creation was about a few days ago a lowly crawling
caterpillar.
But now its recreated body is pumping fluid into the veins of wings destined for
the glorious freedom of the boundless skies in about ten to fifteen minutes
after its emergence from the chrysalis shell the wings will be fully expanded.
The monarch groups them limply to dry them in the warm rays of the sun in a few
hours they will be thoroughly dry and stiffened by the hardening of the fluid.
At last the tries it swings
and rises with majestic power to frolic in the sunny meadows to seek the sparkling
nectar of the flowers to add a new generation of beauty to this wonderful world.
Now there are some things the eye can see some things that are just too small
and here is where the producer classroom films extends the range of the human eye
far beyond its ordinary horizon on this slide for example I have an amoeba.
Now you can see this for me but I can't see it either.
You couldn't see it if I held it right up against the face of the camera
and students as a matter of fact can barely see it with the kind of microscopes
they use in the classroom in classrooms where there are enough microscopes for
every student. Magnified fifty year on hundred
or one hundred twenty times it just doesn't look very big.
It also looks quite dead.
What does an amoeba look like Alive magnified two thousand times its size
and seen in full color. How big.
Speaking of microscopic life how big is I want to sell the animal.
What do one thousand animals look like under the microscope to deliver this
information to the classroom.
We asked one of the great micro for TOG refer to Dr Roman Vishniac to draw the eye
of a needle across the field of his powerful microscopes while his camera or.
Recorded the site in color film.
And then we ask him to magnify two thousand times a living and in color an amoeba.
And that's what you see in this next film clip sequence from his great film protos
are.
The amoeba moves simply by streaming from one place to another the body
becomes lengthened into what is called a pseudo Pod or false foot.
The end of Plasm streams into the pseudopod.
Amoeba with its pseudo Pods forms a major group of protozoa since protozoa are
usually classified by the way in which they move.
Now how about dealing with things that are invisible
that our eyes can't see it all
but you can't magnify you run across these for example in the study of the human
body that important aspect of biology where we study ourselves how to protect
and take care of our bodies and maintain our health
when it comes to understand something about the living processes that affect us.
How would you teach sound how people here.
You can see sound you can see the sound I make as my voice travels through the
camera on the sound track in the speaker of your projector and into your ear.
How do you give a meaningful experience to a young person to whom you're teaching
sound our cameraman told us that about the only way they could see
that this could be done would be to take a camera inside a human head
and then look out through the ear.
This is a very easy to do with most human heads but they're saying
that this is the only way you can see the middle ear living CDROM vibrate see those
three bones the hammer on the anvil on the stereo doing whatever it is they do
that. Communicate. They sound wave of sensation at the ear drum to the brain.
With remarkable ingenuity in a piece of film that's known all around the world
and is widely believed to be one of the most of.
Affected pieces of teaching film ever made.
They didn't just this in a film called The ears and hearing a magic animation
and moving drawings with this remarkable piece of photography in this view we're
looking into the middle here a semi transparent membrane vibrating at the lower
left is the here drop kick bones connected with it by the middle here bone.
This is the sound
that is causing the here drum to vibrate a kick as
the ear drum vibrates it moves the chain of three tiny bones connected with it.
These bones are in the middle part of the ear called the middle ear the largest of
the three bones is about one quarter of an inch long
the human body is a good example of the sound motion picture
and it's best in education.
Almost all of it difficult to understand and difficult to see in action.
Certainly difficult to demonstrate in the classroom about the human heart beats
inside of everyone who's watching means beating inside of me.
You can hear it beating
and you can't see it it's a vital part of our complex body mechanism
and it's a complex mechanism in itself. How does it work. How does the heart pump.
How does that blood get around. What do we mean when we say the heart is a pump.
When we mean
when we talk about heart valves a valid to biology student who has never seen a
heart valve might be like a faucet in the sink
when you see it in autopsy it's just a wrinkled meaningless piece of membrane.
But when the camera gets inside behind
and looks out through a valve while the heart is beating then you understand the
function of our.
And when the skilled animator takes the height as a pump
and with a series of moving drawings shows you just how it functions
and you have another of the unique experiences
that only the classroom film can bring to the teacher in the classroom.