Teaching Aids

TEACHING AIDS

A teaching aid is a tool used by teachers, facilitators or tutors to help learners improve reading and other skills, illustrate or reinforce a skill, fact, or idea and relieve anxiety, fears, or boredom since many teaching aids are like games.

Definition of teaching aid are the aids used by the facilitator to help him/her in facilitating his/her lesson effectively.

Characterstics of Good Teaching aids

·           They should be meaningful and pur-poseful

·           They should be accurate in every aspect

·           They should be simple

·            

·           They should be cheap

·           They should be improvised as for as possible

·           They should be large enough to be properly seen by the students for whom they are meant

·           They should be up-to-date

·           They should be easily portable

·           They should be according to the men-tal level of the students.

·           They should motivate they learners 

Classification of Teaching aids

On the basis of characteristic of the material used in the process of teaching aid classifications as mentioned below:

Audio-aids: Audio-aids help in developing the listening skill of a learner. Audio-aids are those aids which can be only listened. Examples, of such types of aids include, radio, gramophone, tape recorder, audio-tapes, walkman and headphones etc.,

Visual-aids: Aids which require the involvement of learners visual senses are called visual aids. Examples, of such types of aids include viz. graphic aids, 3d-aids, display boards and print material etc.,

Audio-Visual aids: In these aids both the listening (ears) and viewing faculties (eyes) are involved. Such aids include tel-evision programmes, video films, motion pictures, synchronized audio slide pro-jectors, computers and computer-assisted instructions etc.,

Projected: Projected refer to those aids where a bright light is passed through a transparent picture by means of a lens and an enlarged picture is thrown or projected on the screen or the white wall. Eg: film-strip projector, slide projector, overhead projector, TV/VCR etc.,

Non-Projected: Non-Projected aids refer to those aids which do not require projector elec-tricity or projection screen. Such materials can be simply shown, can be hanged or touched. Eg: Chalkboard, Whiteboard, Flannel board, Magnet board, Charts and Wall-Charts, Posters and Pictorial Materials, Models etc.,

Dr.Edgar Dale has classified and arranged audio-visual aids in a procto-rial form called “Cone of Experience”

The primary source of contact between the individual and external world and any intellectual activity depends on expe-riences coming through senses. Even mental activities such as concentration, reflection, conception, imagination, asso-ciation, recollection etc., have their basis in sensory experiences. Mind like stom-ach, works on what it is fed. This feeding comes through senses. The raw material for mental activity is provide by

i. Direct Experiences: Such expe-riences are gained by the pupils through excursions and trips etc.,

ii. Representative Experiences: This type of experiences are less con-crete but are quite useful. This type of experiences are provided by models, specimens, film strips, radio etc.,

iii. Verbal and Symbolic Experiences: Such experiences are those which the pupils gain through word-oral or written. This type of experiences are very abstract and occur at con-ceptual level. E.g. verbal illustra-tions. This type of experience can not be properly followed at the initial stages of child-learning so at initial stage more emphasis be laid on direct and representative experiences.

The above cone represents the material used for audio-visual instructions.

The theory of audio-visual instruc-tion needs that education must make learning permanent and experiences usa-ble. The advocacy for the use of new mate-rial for improving instructions is based on the fact that the verbalistic learning is out of date and the complexity of the time has made our school curriculum very much heavy as the present day knowledge has developed tremendously. We need new ways to adjust ourselves to the changed circumstances and the trends towards realistic learning.