Schools and online education

Photo by Sergey Zolkin on unsplash

Many educators are now investigating how online technologies can improve, extend or enrich teaching and learning experiences. Some schools have begun to experiment, and a few are well down the road to adopting and using online education as a viable supplement, or even replacement for face to face teaching. We now need to think about learning environments rather than simply 'classrooms'. We now need to consider that geographical distance need no longer be a separator between teachers and students - the distances can be bridged by appropriate use of technology.

Way back in 2002 I was involved in one of the largest distance education projects the world had seen at the time. We worked with the Star Schools project to connect over 300 schools in the US state of South Dakota, installing fast internet, satellite television and full motion interactive video into classrooms. Educators could teach from their own base, and work with children across the entire state, and classrooms could connect with each other so that children could learn together and collaborate in educational projects. No travel was involved, but there was a time of disruption while teachers developed their skills around the new technologies.

Where have we managed to travel in the intervening years? Today, technology has become less expensive, and more prevalent in our schools. Networked computers abound, and teachers regularly use video conferencing to connect with classrooms and schools in other parts of the world. We see many creative uses of personal technologies, such as games consoles, smart phones and e-readers, and social media can be used in a variety of ways to promote deeper engagement and reach.

In the lead up to a presentation I'm giving for a group of New Zealand educators on October 7th, I want to pose three key questions that will shape our future use of distance and online technologies for education. In my next post I will present the questions, and elaborate on them to support an online discussion. Before that, do you have any specific questions relating to schools and online education that you think are important? Please post them in the comments box below.

Tomorrow: 3 key questions for the future of online education


Schools and online education by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted by Steve Wheeler from Learning with e's