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”.