Distance Education
Listening to the live session with Alaska got me thinking about distance education, and the reasons I was first attracted to this technology course. Firstly, I did an undergrad subject a few years ago (1998 perhaps) called "technology in Education" which turned out to be really easy credit for anyone computer literate to start with.
That is NOT why I chose this course...
It was also interesting to think about the teaching possibilities of the internet and computers (which, of course, were a lot fewer 8 years ago)
I also did a seminar session on CALL a few years ago in Germany - quite by accident. I was invited to a professional development weekend for a job I hadn't been offered yet (and ended up not being offered, after they'd paid for my weekend away!) and one of the sessions was from the DOS of a different school that was working on CALL. From what I remember they mainly used chat windows and prepared exercises and tasks (and webquests, maybe?) and had regular phone conversations as well, either conferenced or just with the teacher. She described some of the interaction was entirely in the form of a role play: eg. They would arrange the time to call, and the student would call, and the teacher would pretend to be a pizza place. The student could then order a pizza and they could hangup without dropping their roles. Then they could discuss the conversation in an online chat straight after. The idea of sitting in front of a computer all day teaching was something I somehow found appealing - I even made inquiries about job vacancies, but there weren't any unfortunately!
Distance education is something that interests me in general. I've had my own experience of it - twice now, actually, although they were very different experiences. Firstly, I spent my grade 7 year living on a boat in the south pacific, so spent most of the year "attending" the Queensland School of Distance Education. As this was 1991 there was no internet. And as we were sailing, we were often lucky to even get post. I remember recieving a large box of booklets about once every 2 months, acompanied by a letter from my teacher, whose name I barely knew. Essentially, my mother taught us (my younger brothers were in the same boat...er... I mean doing the same thing). I don't remember if we had much in the way of deadlines for completing units or anything, but I do remember that I never did finish all the work. That means I never actually finished Primary school... hmm... Don't tell anyone! Someone might notice and make me go back and do it...
That is NOT why I chose this course...
It was also interesting to think about the teaching possibilities of the internet and computers (which, of course, were a lot fewer 8 years ago)
I also did a seminar session on CALL a few years ago in Germany - quite by accident. I was invited to a professional development weekend for a job I hadn't been offered yet (and ended up not being offered, after they'd paid for my weekend away!) and one of the sessions was from the DOS of a different school that was working on CALL. From what I remember they mainly used chat windows and prepared exercises and tasks (and webquests, maybe?) and had regular phone conversations as well, either conferenced or just with the teacher. She described some of the interaction was entirely in the form of a role play: eg. They would arrange the time to call, and the student would call, and the teacher would pretend to be a pizza place. The student could then order a pizza and they could hangup without dropping their roles. Then they could discuss the conversation in an online chat straight after. The idea of sitting in front of a computer all day teaching was something I somehow found appealing - I even made inquiries about job vacancies, but there weren't any unfortunately!
Distance education is something that interests me in general. I've had my own experience of it - twice now, actually, although they were very different experiences. Firstly, I spent my grade 7 year living on a boat in the south pacific, so spent most of the year "attending" the Queensland School of Distance Education. As this was 1991 there was no internet. And as we were sailing, we were often lucky to even get post. I remember recieving a large box of booklets about once every 2 months, acompanied by a letter from my teacher, whose name I barely knew. Essentially, my mother taught us (my younger brothers were in the same boat...er... I mean doing the same thing). I don't remember if we had much in the way of deadlines for completing units or anything, but I do remember that I never did finish all the work. That means I never actually finished Primary school... hmm... Don't tell anyone! Someone might notice and make me go back and do it...
posted by Kat at 3:32 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home