Distance Education in the Rural K-12 Environment

A small rural school in Idaho tried various forms of distance education to broaden the range of subjects offered to students. It gave up on satellite-based coursework because of high cost and synchronization problems. Correspondence courses solved the synchronization problem, but still required expe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers in the schools 2003-11, Vol.20 (3), p.27-32
Main Author: Southwick, J. Wanless
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to Education
collaboration
Computer Uses in Education
cost
Distance Education
Educational Technology
Elementary Secondary Education
enrichment
Idaho
Internet
Rural
Rural Schools
satellite
school
supervision
synchronization
videoconferencing
Web Based Instruction
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A small rural school in Idaho tried various forms of distance education to broaden the range of subjects offered to students. It gave up on satellite-based coursework because of high cost and synchronization problems. Correspondence courses solved the synchronization problem, but still required expensive adult supervision to keep students on task. IP-based videoconferencing appeared to promise lower costs and better synchronization, but in practice it proved to be difficult to implement and exhausting for course teachers. The school began to view videoconferencing in terms of its enrichment and collaboration values. The Internet, together with other distance education technologies, may one day erase the educational disadvantages of rural isolation. They also promise to make lifelong learning the expected norm.
ISSN:0738-0569
1528-7033
DOI:10.1300/J025v20n03_04