Cole, Barbara

Barbara Cole earned her M.A. in Speech Arts from the State University of California at San Diego and her B.A. in Socio-Economics from Mills College, Oakland, California. Cole specialized in English as a Second Language (ESL) and distance learning throughout her career. She served as a Television Teacher and Research Writer for the American Samoan Educational Television Program from 1966 to 1968. Her work for the project included curriculum development, writing lesson plans, writing scripts for televised instruction, and as an on-camera teacher for English as a Second Language courses.

The U. S. Congress and the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) funded an effort to completely revise and modernize the American Samoan educational system with a television-based curriculum. Early in 1961, the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB), with money from Congress, began studying methods for improving literacy in American Samoa. It was decided to use television to improve educational practices. The new system went on the air in October 1964. By 1965, there were six TV channels being used for educational instruction in American Samoa and by 1966, two-thirds of elementary and secondary students were in newly constructed schools and nearly one-third of all instruction was conducted by TV. American teachers contracted to teach in American Samoa for two years. The teachers developed lesson plans that were filmed for broadcast to classrooms throughout American Samoa. Native Samoan teachers were in the actual classroom to facilitate instruction. NAEB ended its association with the Educational Television project in 1969. The project ceased local recording of educational programs in 1975.

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