Reaction to chapter 10 of Computer Education for Teachers

The point of information that distance education started back in 1873 with the establishment of the Society to Encourage Studies at Home b Ann Ticknor was worth the price of this chapter. It never occurred to me that a discreet event could be identified in such a way. I enjoyed the mention of desktop video conferencing having just seen and experienced an international video-conference put on by k-12 schools that featured students from all over the world presenting topics that interested them via the Internet. Some participants had two-way interaction (visual/oral/aural), they could both see and speak, while visitors like myself could only view the goings on and interact in a text-based chat. When I'm back at my school computer I'll post a link to the archives of their presentations so you all can view what I'm talking about. It was an exciting event for the kids, and you could really see the amount of work they put into researching their presentations. There was also excellent use of the multimedia capabilities of such a virtual conference with one school in Canada presenting as part of their time, a live musical performance of First Nation People drumming and chanting. I think that we'll see more and more such virtual conferences in the near future.