2017, VOL. 3 ISSUE 2, PART K
Children’s response to educational television in Mizoram
Author(s): Ngurdingliani Sailo
Abstract:
Television transcends all national borders and reaches the homes of the Mizo people. Children in the family arrange their lives around this magic box. They learn from this medium and are positively or negatively influenced by it depending on the content. Educational programme designers recognized its power to induce learning and they carefully designed programmes for a long range educational benefit. This paper consists “children’s response to educational television†a section on one research in Mizoram, one of the North-Eastern dominant tribal States in India. This section was part of a careful research design. 20 younger and 20 older children from the private schools in Aizawl and Champhai were selected. Private school children were selected because of their facility in the use of English. The two districts were selected because of their willingness. Younger children were shown 3 different episodes of GGSS which have similar format and content like learning numbers, letters and other socio-emotional skills. Older children were shown 3 different episodes of Science Mein Twist as the content has practically applicable experiments and were close to children’s academic syllabus. Children’s focus toward the educational programme was noted to be both engaging as well as leading to inter-personal talk or other responses. Younger children seemed to have a nature of shifting their screen-focus. This nature was quickly reverted with change of scene through music and some sounds. Older children engaged in the programme with their, eyes, ears and pens. They were quite focused and seemed to lose interest only when the programme had too much narratives and the accent bars their understanding. The pre-test and the post-test indicated the efficacy of educational television as a tool of learning. Parents reported that the programme increased the desire to own a product and also altered family conversation as well as entertainment patterns. Children’s responses indicated that they learn from educational programme. However, duration on how long they will remember such learnt concepts, new words and behaviours remains ambiguous. Children’s responses indicated that it was difficult for them to comprehend new accents, fast and unfamiliar language. They also easily lost attention when the shows become too static with long dialogues. Language, novelty, age of the viewer, captions, clarity in content, speed, humour, action filled characters and practical applicability were significant in engaging children’s interest and comprehension.
How to cite this article:
Ngurdingliani Sailo. Children’s response to educational television in Mizoram. Int J Home Sci 2017;3(2):679-692.