K-12 Distance Education

The article by Tom Clark included a great deal of information that is difficult to summarise in any small report. As a general discussion of distance education in the K-12 environment, the historical trends were interesting. There seems to have been a push for education to take advantage of new dominant communication technologies each time there is a breakthrough. Radio, television, and the internet are examples. In my opinion, the noble part of all of the pushes for developments in distance education technologies for K-12 students is the desire to bring the benefits of education to all children in the nation, and also to improve the quality of education.

With all the data presented in the article, it seems logical to predict that distance education and in particular online education in K-12 will continue to spread, and continue to improve as technology continues to improve. There will probably be a desire to use online education with younger audiences. Until the present, distance education in K-12 has mostly been for high school, with some middle school level content. It is likely that opportunities will increase for elementary grade children to participate in online education.

With this in mind, the questions that I am left pondering include: at what age does online education become an option, what are the issues with younger age chilren? are the issues changing with the avances of technology and the prominence of technology in the home? what are the politics involved in questions of elementary aged children learning online? how much human interaction is really needed for the different aged children? is there an age at which close interaction is less needed? could young children learn to read and write without close human attention and human to human stimulus?

I feel that the biggest issues to deal with as the potential for change appears are the paradigms and traditions that are sometimes good and at other times hold us back. The education systems are permeated by such paradigms, traditions and opinions, and that may hold back the potential in K-12 distance education that the modern era of technology brings.

Articles - Findings

I was not sure how to synthesise the findings as they are all different!

What seemed consistent to me is that there was no such thing as an objective study in that none of them found contrary to the premise of the study.

Some of the articles were research discussions, and these obviously had conlcusions related to their own take on theory.

To me, the most interesting findings were in the practical report articles where authors discussed their own class, or a real live set of circumstances. These findings seemed to me to be more open and accepting of problems and negative issues that had arisen, and I learned more from these.

Independant learning discussion

Theoretical Framework

A few of the articles do not have any kind of what I consider to be a theoretical framework. To be fair, these articles probably didn't need one due their nature as either a historical review, or pragmatic discussion of actual practices.
From those that do have theoretical frameworks, they are varied.
One is based on Vygotsky and what the author describes as social constructivism.
Another is based on the media/method debate/theories and also on the synchronous/asynchronous debate/theories.
Another is based on theoretical definitions of interactivity, which could also come somewhat under the theories of dialog.
Others have various theoretical themes. These were undeclared in that I had to extrapolate them from the article.

Computer conferences and group learning

My head is spinning a bit, so it might be nonsense! (So what's new I hear you ask!)