EDITORIALLY SPEAKING T h e problems created for college teachers by the knowledge and population explosions offer greater challenges each year. Selection of appropriate content for courses, elimination of less pertinent m a t e rial, incorporation of latest developments, while interesting and exciting, can become excessively time-consuming and frustrating. More efficient ways must be found for conveying and having assimilated by students knowledge that is increasingly more extensive and more sophisticated. For teachers a t schools where enrollments continue to rise there also is the need to develop more effective ways of providing quality instruction to large numbers of students. considerable reinforcement in both the efficacy of transmitting knowledge and in handling large numbers should result from more effectiveapplication of the techniques of the "technological classroom" which include computerassisted instruction, films, film loops, and television. At the 152nd National Meeting of the ACS in Xew York next month, the Teaching Aids Committee of the ACa will sponsor a program illustrating some new uses of computers, film loops, and television tape recorders in college chemistry instruction. (See Page A667.) Both the hardware and software of these techniques will be available for examination throughout the week. A computer terminal will be available a t which a teacher may sit and conduct a dialogue with the University of Texas computer on one of several topics in general chemistry. The teacher also may view t e l e vision tapes recorded in chemistry departments at several colleges during the spring and illustrating the presentation of such diverse topics as the operation of a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer or the use and reading of a McLeod gauge. New cartridge-loading rear-view film projectors will be available to view short "home-made" film loops on topics such as vibrational modes in molecules or how to operate a single-pan balance. The committee hopes to have available a desk a t which a teacher (student) can take a laboratory examination presented on film and graded by a device attached to the desk. I n addition to these demonstrations formal presentations will summarize the present 9tate of development and the potential for college chemistry courses of each of these modern teaching aids. The hope is that this program will stimulate thought and imaginative activity. Several applications might be suggested: Short film loops in cartridges, ready to view, need only be inserted in the projector and the projector turned on. A student may borrow cartridges from the library and view the film privately as many times as he wishes while seated in a carrel provided for this purpose. Appropriate film loops and loop projectors may
be placed beside instruments in the laboratory so that before using the instrument for the first time a student may view a short film on the principles and procedures of its operation. Teachers may find film loops, with or without sound, useful additions to classroom preeentations. For example, a thirty second film showing the vibrational modes of water molecules could save many words and may even provide a better-remembered experience for the student. Television tape recorders might he used t o record experiments not possible or easy to perform in class. Instruments or apparatus permanently located in research laboratories can be taped in operaticn and the tape shown minutes or weeks later. Television equipment is such that students, as they sit in the classroom, can make readings on instruments. This is made possible by camera lenses, which magnify instrument dials or charts so that they cover the entire television screen. Prices and simplicity of operation of the t e l e vision cameras and recorders make this technique available to all college teachers. Computer-assisted instruction, while expensive for large numbers of students, has great ve~atility. Programmed instruction may come into its own when used in conjunction with computers where this versatility provides the opportunity for unique interaction b e tween machine and student. Computers have been used to give students practice in the reasoning associated with (a) qualitative analysis unknowns, (b) titration of unknown acids, etc, and (c) preparation of solutions for analysis. Large computers have been used to control as many as 8000 lantern slides, the computer providing random access to any one slide in less than a minute. By using a cathode tube readout, computers can he programmed to generate displays or "pictures" on the screen of the cathode tube. The components of the display can be moved relative to one another under the control of the computer. Computergenerated films, made by photographing these displays may be very useful for illustrating such phenomena as stereochemistry in chemical reactions, solutions to the Schrijdinger Equation, structure, and change in proteins and high polymers. While modern teaching aids are not a panacea for the problems created by the explosions in knowledge and in population, and while they can never replace dedicated knowledgeable classroom teachers, they do appear to proffer both an extension of the teacher's communicative skills and a mechanism for improved self-study, thereby enabling students to proceed somewhat independently. To this end the Teaching Aids Committee program a t New York should be informative and helpful. W. T. LIPPINCOW
