CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the study
The teacher’s task is by no means easy as it involves someone who has some ideas, knowledge, information or experiences trying to share what he or she has with someone else who does not have a similar experience. It is a communication task which requires the teacher to use every available means to convince the learners to buy his/her ideas or accept the message. It is not enough for the teacher to give information, he or she must support what he or she says with educational media which appeal to the learners’ sensory experience so that learning may be effective.
Audio visual aids, otherwise referred to as educational media, could be defined as the wide variety of equipments and materials used for teaching and learning by teachers and students (Okechukwu, 2010). They are instructional materials by which the teacher, through the utilization of more than one sensory channel is able to clarify, establish and correlate concepts, interpretation and appreciations. They make dynamic learning experience more concrete and realistic. The use of audio visual aids improves students’ critical and analytical thinking.
In the past, a teacher effectiveness depends on his knowledge of the subject matter, knowledge of how to organize and present content meaningfully and an understanding of those being taught, but today, much emphasis is placed upon the use of audio visual aids. Audio visual aids make learning more permanent in the minds of the learners because people remember about 90% of what they see and do. Gana (2000) opined that the successful utilization of any audio visual aid depends on the wisdom and the resourcefulness of the teacher. The teacher should make adequate use of available audio visual materials on his everyday teaching. This will arouse the interest of the students and enable them see things in their natural setting.
When education was introduced in Nigeria in the past, chalkboards, charts, pictures and some concrete objects were only used as audio visual materials, but with the recent developments in the education system, materials like model, television, computer and radio-tape recorder are now being used in the schools. Audio visual aids are very crucial to the proper implementation of any curriculum used in the education process (Eze, Ani, & Eya, 2007). Learners are supposed to see, hear, feel, touch and practice whatever they are learning, and for every academic delivery to be effective, cognizance should be taken of the present day education and technology and their efficient gadgets and techniques resulting in improved way of learning. The teacher as a chamber of knowledge has to improve his mode of lesson delivery to be in line with the current trend. He cannot remain static in a world that is constantly changing educationally and technologically, he should familiarize himself with the innovation that abound in his profession so as to cope with up-coming challenges. This is because one way of ensuring that the learner is being carried along in the process of learning is by the provision and utilization of audio visual aids in teaching. When teaching is appropriately done with appropriate audio visual aids, it has a direct impact on students’ achievements since their interests in learning are stimulated (Abbatte and Mcmahon 2002).
Education is a life long activity, therefore, a learner must be supplied with the necessary skills to enable him or her perform effectively in his or her environment and the world at large. The learner can only have this information through the good use of audio visual aids in conjunction with the presented learning materials. Education experts and experienced teachers agree that the use of audio visual aids helps the students whose teachers constantly and gainfully employ those materials because they tend to perform better academically than those whose teachers rarely employ audio visual aids in their teaching.
Audio visual is defined as the combination of various digital media types such as text, images, sound and video, into an integrated multi-sensory interactive application or presentation to convey a message or information. In other words, audio visual means “an individual or a small group using a computer to interact with information that is represented in several media, by repeatedly selecting what to see and hear next” (Agnew, Kellerman and Meyer, 2011).
Reisman (2010) described audio visual as a ray of “computer-driven interactive communication system, which create, store, transmit and retrieve, textual, graphic and audio tory networks of information.