It started several decades ago. I had teachers enrolled in my evening classes. As we do right now, we often have snowstorms. So, teachers 90 miles away spent a full day teaching and then drove to my class, trying to avoid sliding into a tree, not to mention deer, bears and other vehicles passing them at deadly speeds. Someone mentioned we had the capability of transmitting television to the outlying school systems and teachers could view and be viewed in their specially equipped high school distance education rooms. They didn't have to drive long distances before and after class and I could start a little earlier in the day.
Sometimes, we lost the video or the audio signal. I found, just as with telephones, that voice carries a great deal of information but that for many purposes, the picture of a talking head and students looking at a tv didn't do much. As the web emerged, it became possible to layout page-like sections of information and quizzes that were received on computers at schools, home or anywhere with high reliability.
I found that distance education classes worked well in the main but that if a student had a special problem, a phone conversation could offer effective encouragement or clarification. These days, sound files, slide presentations, videos could all be used for education or general communication and are being used that way. I just read today that Iran has created its own version of YouTube.
Getting educated without funds and admission to schools has been rather possible since free public libraries, such as those built with Carnegie funds before 1900 in the US and elsewhere. Lest anyone think that these days learning on one's own takes place only on iPads, such a person should look at the story of "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind", the African young man, his town without electricity. He used the American funded library to learn to build a windmill that would produce electricity and did.
But, as time wore on, I got to thinking of the fact that the world had more fax machines than computers. I have heard of Canadian and Australian distance ed prograrms conducted by radio only. I thought about the fact that those occasional phone calls accomplished so much for students who were lost or discouraged.
I got to the point where I wrote out what seemed like a satisfactory set of requirements that had to be met by a student for me to stand behind her or him as having learned a given subject. Any way a student could learn what those requirements are and show me work that met them would be ok.
I have educated friends of mature years who never touch a computer. A few of them respond immediately and cleverly to text messages. There are almost certainly people who communicate solely by Facebook or Twitter or both. There are many other avenues from smoke signals to carrier pigeon to the little nautical signal flags boats use.
If you are trying to communicate with someone, it pays to explore alternative channels and modes. A different email account, a post office box, a family friend - there may be certain ways and places that person uses to communicate. Speaking to people in their preferred mode can be dramatically successful.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
