Submitted by jenny on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 06:36
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Description of system: general. First: I have spent hundreds of hours on the telephone, talking to old students from all regions of the country. It is a wonderful thing. Think of it! On one telephone network, I can speak to twenty percent of the world’s population. It is an effective oral English tool. However, it does have its limitations. I cannot “see”, and this makes tasks like correcting written work almost impossible (just try it!). Second: when I was traveling in Japan, I saw high-school students with the latest video cell phones beaming live motion pictures to another telephone user. Of course, businesses use this technology too—“video-conferencing”. Why not have a technology which is mid-way between a small video cell phone and the expensive, more complex video-conferencing tools? In other words, why not introduce a new generation of common, plain, ordinary household telephones—with a flat-screen video display/video camera on them? This is not for looking at fuzzy, cameo-sized pictures of your boy/girl-friend, but for letting the other person read a real book (and clearly) that you are holding under the camera! In this way, teachers will be able to teach something to children who are not sitting next to them—maybe one is in Shanghai and the other is in Xining. The implications are very large indeed.
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Description of teacher’s role. It seems fair to assume that the teacher will usually have all the books (especially those who are in the big cities). The teacher can get a book, call up the student, put the book under the video camera, and begin the class. Both parties use a pencil to point out where they are in the text, so there is no room for misunderstandings. In this way, the student is freed from having to run around looking for books.
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Description of student’s role. If the student has written a piece of writing, it can be put under the video camera for the teacher to criticize. The student can carry out the teacher’s proofreading instructions. If the student has something to “show-and-tell” the teacher, then this is very easy. In a sense, the student’s role is simple.
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On telephone design, to help this learning. I am not a “technically-gifted” person, but here are some ideas concerning the video-telephone. First: the device can be used on the current system of telephone wires. The video camera can be relatively simple (it only has to be able to read a book page!). Super-powered cameras and screens, which may require sophisticated wire transmission technology, are not needed! Second: the camera/screen unit does not have to be part of the actual telephone; it can somehow “plug” into an already existing telephone. (This saves money, as you don’t have to buy a whole new telephone.) Third: the camera part is mounted onto a stand. It is always “looking down” onto the table, where the book is lying. The camera is auto-focus, or it can be adjusted manually by the person with the book. (In other words, you are focusing for each other—to make everything less complex and expensive.) Fourth: the camera is an “eye” and nothing more—no computer link-ups, and the like. (Keep It Simple!) Fifth: perhaps this device can also be connected to a real TV set, so that a teacher in one place can teach a whole classroom full of students somewhere else (you use the device, plus a big-screen TV connected to the device). In summary, these are some ideas that some company, or individual, or graduate student from Qinghua University can use to develop a telephone attachment, so that reading and writing can be taught over long distances. Hopefully, such video-telephones will not be too expensive, so that most people (or at least, one school in each village) can buy one. In this way, English teachers can share their skills all over the country.
