I have understood that in the field of distance learning there is one country that is very much ahead of everybody else. Australia.
In an audio interview Martin Dougiamas, Creator of Moodle, tells how he grow up in a middle of Australia. In 1970’s he did his first years of school with four or five other youth talking via radio with a teacher who was 600 miles away. Every other week an airplane would stop by with school materials (via Steve Hargadon and Stephen Downes).
Distance learning has a long tradition in Australia. It looks that using Internet and web is very natural next step in the Australian history of distance learning already including use of post (letters), radio and TV for the same purpose. Many Australian are use to communicate, study and learn with people at distance.
On Friday I will participate in an online session organized by a group of great Australian people. I will give a short brief and we will then discuss about the MobilED initiative – our mobile learning project.
The session is open for anyone to participate in. If you want to see how the Australians do distance sessions online, please join us! Here are the details:
Place / platform: Breeze – Flash based online conferencing system
-> just get in to the event room.
Time: ESB Australia 2:00 PM – 2:30 PM
-> check your time around the world.
Hope to see you there!
teemuleinonen.fi 