Ferguson - 3 Interesting facts about distance education

Distance education and eLearning were somewhat new to me prior to beginning my coursework in the COMET program. The most experience I had with it included a hybrid course I took at CSULB during my credential program, for the one educational technology course required at the time. Every other week our class met online, using Blackboard to make required posts to forums on various topics. The other experience I have with distance education is due to my husband being in the military. Throughout his career he has taken several correspondence courses as a part of the promotion process. He was sent reading material and required to take a multiple choice test at the end, then mail it back in for credit. All that being said, I found a few facts about distance education to be very interesting after reading this article.
First, I enjoyed learning that its roots go all the way back to as far as the 1600's. I would have never thought about distance education having any role back then. Reflecting on it, it makes some sense due to the fact that people back then wanted to learn and gain more skills, but didn't necessarily have the ability to attend formal training or classes.
Another fact I found interesting was that studies have shown that younger children get more out of educational television than older ones do. This makes perfect sense to me, as I have a 3 year old who truly learns from all of the educational shows she watches. She doesn't sit in front of the tv all day, but when she watches some of 'her shows' she will legitimately interact with the show, repeating what they are saying or doing the movements asked of her. Although I think that adults are capable of learning from tv, I cannot imagine myself interacting in the way young kids do.
Lastly, the topic of eLearning and virtual schools for the k12 world caught my attention. Oddly enough I did not think that online course work was available for high schoolers or middle schools. I looked at the www.flvs.net site briefly and found it to be really informative and quite the eye-opener. I can see how something like this would greatly benefit someone who is being homeschooled. Personally, I'm not sure I feel completely comfortable with the idea of teenagers taking online courses. As an adult I have struggled with staying disciplined enough to get work done on time, so I can only imagine what it would be like if I were a teenager taking on online course. For the right kid, yes, this formant would work. I do like that there are options for kids who would benefit from this form of education.