ADDNET Network: A Low-End Technology Success.
1993; 1105 Media; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0192-592X
Autores Tópico(s)Multimedia Communication and Technology
ResumoWe have been pleased to see the school of thought come out of the closet in the on-going debate about the future of distance education.(1,2,3) By lowend, we mean distance education that is based on satellite technology and not dependent upon two-way-video interaction between all points. For example, McKell, Hardy and Stocks described a television program with audio interaction possibilities utilized by Michigan State University in the late 1960s to teach elementary accounting courses, with the instructor in the TV studio and classrooms located around the state.(4) This low-end technology has been around for quite a while, though it has been substantially enhanced by current satellite technologies that allow the signal to reach an international audience, as well as the addition of computer-generated graphics. In a sense, it is truly a measure of our success that this phenomenally powerful educational tool can now be considered low end, when less than 30 years ago the practical applications of satellite technologies for adult education did not exist. However, compared to the two-way video possibilities existing today--compressed video and others that allow phone line/land line use for two-way audio/video interaction--sending a beam to a satellite and then downlinking it at certain sites, with limited audio and interaction possibilities, seems relatively mundane. In planning a recent inservice series on a hot button topic in education, we chose lowend technologies for a number of very specific reasons. Initially, we anticipated that our downlinks would be limited to Georgia and the southeastern U.S., and our staff has estimated that perhaps 25 downlinks would view our three telecourses during the first year. We were quite surprised, and more than a little pleased, when 100 downlinks responded, including several in Canada. We also had requests for downlink information from England, the Bahamas and Australia. We now believe that we have a powerful vehicle in place for continued inservice education for teachers on various topics of interest. Like other college faculty,[2,3] we intend to utilize that potent tool in every way possible. We are convinced that this low-tech approach is a valid choice for the immediate future. The purposes of this paper are twofold: to discuss advantages of this type of low-end technology, and to discuss the decisions we made regarding applications for international inservice for public school teachers and parents. * The ADDNET Program In the fall of 1991, we saw a need for inservice on attention deficit disorders. Many children who manifested an array of attention problems in public school classrooms had been denied the assistance they needed and parents were angry. Several organizations of parents and professionals had been formed to advocate for the particular types of educational services these children required, and school districts were under pressure to provide inservice for elementary- and secondary- school teachers to prepare them to work with these students. Very little inservice education was available to teachers and, to our knowledge, no inservice programs were available nationally. We obtained funding from the federal government, along with some matching funds from our university and began planning ADDNET, the Attention Deficit Disorders Telecourse Network[5] (see sidebar for a description). * Tailoring to Specific Needs We knew that our program should be available to numerous downlink locations throughout the nation. Also, we would not be bound by the present structure of colleges and universities--specifically, the need to generate credit hours in particular By virtue of the grant funding, we were sure that we could provide stand-alone minicourses on the topic. In short, we were interested in serving an inservice market rather than a pre-service teacher market in college courses. …
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