Up until reading this article I always thought of distance education as necessarily involving the Internet. As soon as I began reading I was surprised to learn that distance education has been around in many forms for 100 years! It seems obvious now that mail, radio, and television, could serve as effective means to educate people. I guess I never thought of Sesame Street as school when I watched it as a little kid. I also found it interesting that even though so much has changed with the technology, meaningful and predictable learning outcomes are really based on the effectiveness of the instructor. I find it equal parts comforting and scary to learn that the media used to teach doesn't really matter. What really matters is the ability of the instructor to present the material in a way that is meaningful to students. I guess that's good just good job security.
I usually associate school with the traditional definition of a brick and mortar building with teachers and students inside. The teachers guides the students, and they learn from the activities presented to them. Reading this article made me see that distance learning is a balance between the control of the instructor over the course and the control of the student over his or her own learning objectives. I think that's what I like best about being a distance student: I have control over what I learn. I am more motivated because of this and my assignments have much more relevance than they would otherwise.
The part of the article I found most interesting was this, "To use a post-
Fordist term, distance education is a system of mass-customized education that is most
suitable to the needs of a post-modern culture where contextual critical thinking and problem
solving is valued more than performing standard tasks as uniformly as possible, very often out
of context" (p.28). This really hit home with me because I teach algebra. I can't think of a better example of performing standard tasks out of context than teaching algebra to 13 year-olds. In every chapter I strive to add real-world context to abstract skills, bit it is very difficult most times. Most of the difficulty stems from the time frame placed on teachers by the state standards. There must be a better way of teaching algebra than cramming abstract skills down students throats one after another until they can't take anymore. Maybe one day I'll feel comfortable calling myself part of the post-modern culture of distance educators using informational technology to teach my students to learn.
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