I was pleased to hear my professors reservations about distance education!  I am a strong proponent of public education and believe that students should not go to private school or take school purely online.  I also have believed that distance education was strictly that, for distance education.  When I heard a fellow teacher comment that she was taking her online class to be a principal from a local university I was confused.  She discussed the ease of the class and compared to my experience at TWU her classes were a joke!  I was so frustrated that she could be a public school administrator one day:(

This past class we discussed distance and distributed education.  My biggest revelation (as silly as it sounds) was the true difference between the two.  Distance education is actually guided by a teacher/instructor while distributed education is just materials.  My new thought is if computers are automating education classes or guiding learners then the educational process has become distributed and is not longer distance education.  This means that within our own schools students are receiving distributed education via computers on a daily basis when using tutoring programs that “move at their pace”.

Chapter 2 -

This chapter covers the history of distance education from the late nineteenth century.  According to Moore and Kearsley there are four main stages:

1. Correspondence/Independent Study (1890-present)
2. Open Universities: (1969- present)
3. Broadcasting & Teleconferencing (1960s-present)
4. Multimedia & the Web (1980s – present)

This chapter does seem to me as interesting that it only focuses on 1890 to present.  I would think that from the start of the written word distributed and distance education would have started.  Socrates feared the written word would adversely affect society.  I believe that would be a starting point for the history of distributed/distance learning?

I cannot image taking a course via radio!  I am impatient as it is with the “instant” nature of the Internet when using asynchronous communication (i.e. forum, blog, wiki, etc.). It seems that as technology has changed more people are taking advantage of distance and distributed learning.  I do not think that this is a good thing.  I personally believe that we need to interact with others individually to gain maximum benefit in learning. Text does not convey emotion well, neither does voice only.  Seeing another persons facial expressions, eye movements, and inflection bring the entire focus of their statements to light.

Chapter 3 -

This chapter discuss the various nature of distance education including: correspondence schools, open universities, schools, colleges and universities, teleconference consortia, corporations, and even the department of defense.This chapter also presents a table of various distance applications, these tables are dated and do not necessarily help today.  Also the table does not differentiate between individual or group focused learining.

Week 1 January 20, 2010

√ Without a stock definition, locate a strong example of distributed/distance education and come up with a paragraph justification explaining WHY it is strong.

Bible.  Widely available and in many languages.  The Bible is one of the first worldly distributed teaching tools for distance learning (around the 1380′s).  Easily accessible to almost anyone in any circumstance. Many “teachers” that are familiar or trained to teach the contents. Teaching method is anecdotal in nature allowing interpretation and inference for the reader/learner.

√ Without a stock definition, locate a strong example of distributed/distance education and come up with a paragraph justification explaining WHY it is weak.

My Mother-in-law is currently enrolled in a federal program to assist teachers in obtaining their Masters degree in the field of education.  She is assigned classes automatically, there is no “teacher”, the classes are from a prescribed curriculum.  Every semester she has all “learning tasks” to be done and she must complete them by preset deadlines.  Tests are online, timed, and according to her, unforgiving!  This does not seem to promote creativity, foster personal growth, or create interpersonal skills.

Moore and Kearsley Chapter 1 -

This chapter focuses on defining distance education, discussing “systems approach”, and fundamental changes that distance education can bring to the educational field.  Applying the “systems approach” philosophy to distance education allows one to realize that all parts of the educational process are inter-related and independent at the same time.  Meaning that if one aspect of communication is altered in the instructional design the over all learning experience could be altered.  The “systems approach” of distance education also broadens the impact of it on traditional education.  Lack of need for classroom space, parking, buildings, etc. or a need for computers, internet capabilities, etc.

Moore and Kearsley Chapter 12 -

This chapter covers many aspects of distance education that would affect its effectiveness for all stakeholders.  The authors look at the acceptance of this type of education by many educational institutions and organizations. They also discuss how distance education might affect the structure of universities.  New technologies are also examined to see how they might influence distance education.  The authors also explore how distance education might impact teacher training. Finally Chapter 12 looks at how educational institutions might begin to compete or work together with the influx of distance education.  I truly appreciate the authors discussing the importance of life long learning being a leading influence to distance education.

Distance Education Fun Time Lines:

ONLINE TIMELINE

I love my mac, but has apple started a trend for consumers to demand beauty as well as functionality? Does an object that is just a tool need to also be beautiful? Michael Angelo’s paintings are exquisite, but his tools were everyday. So now a final question, does beauty blind us of substance?

Windows XP (2001 release date) became a good, stable working version of the windows platform. It is not excessively flashy or beautiful. In 2004ish the Ipod exploded and changed our music experiences for ever (and soon after our cellphones). This eruption brought Apple to the attention of the masses as a beautiful and simple operating system. Windows jumped on the Beauty band wagon of OSX and created Vista. Vista was released and flopped in two years. The goal in my view of Microsoft was to create a product that was visually stunning, but they forgot to make it actually work!

This trend seems to have also spilled over into the classroom. Districts love to have shinny new toys and tote the benefits of technology to student learning. But does the vanity begit the substance? Making the tool (technology) the focus will never improved instruction. Vanity or Substance, technology does not equal good instruction; good instruction stands alone.