The Importance of Learning and Teaching Aids in the Education Process

The governments and other responsible authorities in schools spent a lot of funds buying audio-visual aids through the audio visual services but many teachers especially secondary school teachers hardly use teaching aids and they perceived them as unnecessary.
Teachers especially in primary Education should be encouraged to use as many teaching and learning aids as possible to set an environment which is stimulative and conducive to learning and in which pupils can be easily guided through the discovery of knowledge on their own.
Learning and teaching aids are items used to facilitates learning and teaching.These can be visual or audio .
Bruner(1966)defines learning as the teaching intend to evoke in the learner's mind the patterns of ideas similar to those which already exist in the teacher's mind .To show that the learner has learnt and must then put together those patterns by using more than one sense of the five senses of touch ,sight ,hearing ,smelling and feeling.Moreover the instruction that provided to the learner proceeded from a direct experience through the representation of pictures films etc to symbolic represantation as in words.
Concrete experience to facilitate learning and the acquisition retention and usability of abstract samples.The provision of a good learning environment is what distinguishes a good teacher from an inferior one .Whatever subjects or grade you teach ,the use of learning aids is always superior to the non-use of aids
There are a variety of learning aids that can be used to make a lesson more interesting and more clearly explained .Examples are:
•Fixed on the walls of the classroom are chalkboard,charts etc
•Electronics include computers,TVs ,Radios ,overhead Projectors
•Environment and Resource persons
Choice of learning Aids should fulfill the aims and objective of the lesson to be taught .An aid used in one lesson might not relay the same message when used in another lesson.
A teacher therefore should carefully plan and choose the aids to be used in one particular lesson .Learning aids if not propery chosen might misled the pupils instead of promoting understanding.
Points to consider when choosing Learning Aids:
♦Choose learning aids that are appropriate for each individual lesson.
♦Aids should be large enough to be seen by pupils sitting at the back of the class.
♦They should be easily understood by the all cognitive levels of pupils.
♦If two of more learning aids are to be used in one lesson .They should have some relationship to each other so that they connect well in the pupils' minds.
♦Choose aids which will encourage pupils active participation in class as well a securing their attention through out the lesson.
♦The teaching and learning aids should be as natural as possible and should assimilate the real thing.It is meaningless to colour on orange ,blue when it is yellow in real life.
♦Choose aids that you are able to manipulate.
Advantages of using Media:They arouse interests as little is learnt when one is not motivated. A motivated learner become attentive only if got interests thus correct use visuals aids can be used to arouse interests.
♥ They define facts and concepts precisely and easily .Here teaching aids are seen as a way of making abstract and complex concepts easier to understand on the part of the learner.
♥Audio-visual aids make learning appeal to various sense organs thereby making learning more real as well as helping learners remember what they would have learnt much more easily than without any teaching and learning aids.