Distance Learning Lecture

This lecture went into detail of the topic distance learning. I was amazed to find out that distance learning started many years ago, and there was me thinking that the open university had started not that many years ago. Sue stated that the earliest form of distance learning took place in Australia in 1909 - School notes were sent to students who were unable to get to a near school and their parents felt that they wanted their children to be educated also. However, when telephone became mainstream, group telephone lessons took place - it became part of the culture of Australia. In addition, Sue explained that when she watched old episodes of Skippy, she saw kids with headsets on their heads and she know realises that that is what they probably were - group telephone lessons. This makes think what my school life would have been like if i would have had this type of schooling. Do you think it would of had a more positive or negative effect on your schooling?

Although it seems that distance learning has been going on for many years, it is still seen as alternative rather that traditional. Sue described that the discourse around distance learning is that it is something alternative. And as technology keeps on evolving, different ways of distance learning are evolving also. For example, this blogging system is a type of distance learning. Do you think it is 'radical'? For me, i don't believe it is 'radical' because i am used to web 2.0 which offers thing such as facebook and myspace, therefore blogging wasn't as 'radical' and others might think.

Distance learning might be the future and the way forward, but right now distance learning that takes place on the inet is not available to everyone in every country. As Sue pointed out the poor people in English speaking countries could probably have access to computers, one could access a computer in a library, however other countries such as India, the opportunities for the people seemed to be labeled as 'poor' in that country is minimal that they have chance to get to a computer. Therefore can distance learning really be the future??? Technology will always continue to adapt to the western model world and the rest of the world will probably stay behind, so will it be successful?