3 INTERESTING FACTS-WEEK 1

The article was full of many new and interesting facts for me.
It was specially interesting to learn about the development and history of distance education. It is quite funny that the development never had a defined goal of how distance education would develop into what it is today. We can assume that with the constant advances in technology, distance education will continue to change and evolve. From the roots of distance apprenticeship programs in the 1600’s to entire graduate programs given online today, there has been an exponential change.

I was quite surprised to learn that so many American children attend online schools. The article stated that there are over 80 state sponsored schools! The need is clear since more and more parents are choosing to homeschool their children, but the resources to do so may not be readily available. However, I am still skeptical that many valuable lessons are learned when a child/student interacts face to face with their peers and instructors.

I found it interesting the research stated about learners getting just as much from eLearning as in traditional classrooms. With the costs of traditional education continually getting more expensive (3 times that of the inflation rate!) it seems that developing distance education would be an intelligent investment for the government, although if actually instated many more teachers would loose their jobs.