5 ms·

Remote instruction was viewed as an important early application of telecommunications technology. For example, the first FM radio station in this state (KANW, w

Remote instruction was viewed as an important early application of telecommunications technology. For example, the first FM radio station in this state (KANW, which perhaps due to its experimental nature at the time apparently did not claim a vanity call sign with meaning as most early stations did) was operated by the city school district with the purpose of broadcasting centrally produced lessons to classrooms. Broadcast to the public was only an incidental goal at the time as FM receivers were not yet common. Similarly, in many cities there is a public access television station which was, at least historically, operated by the K-12 district for similar purposes (KNME here, originally for New Mexico Education, has a similar history). In some larger areas there is also a television station operated by the community college or university extension, originally for the purpose of delivering continuing education courses. Today the majority of these stations have quietly transformed into public stations (many having become NPR or PBS affiliates) and that historical purpose is largely lost. All evidence indicates that this concept of remote instruction was never particularly successful, although some school districts retained a city-wide closed circuit television system for quite some time with the primary use of announcements and occasionally low-interest courses such as less common foreign languages. Remote insturction is certainly not new, and while the technology has indeed advanced I'm not convinced that it's really advanced since the 1960s to a degree that really revolutionizes the field. The technology in use today is still fundamentally video and audio delivery. Of course it's usually bidirectional today, but anyone who's tried to teach online has probably discovered that bidirectional video doesn't help nearly as much as you would hope.

leetrout 6y ago
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing.
gxqoz 6y ago
And before this there was correspondence learning (i.e. learning via snail mail). Many technologies have been pitched as being transformational for education. Often they have some impact but don't live up to the hype.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  100 years ago correspondence courses enabled people who could not afford college get college degrees. My grandfather earned a college degree this way, and liked the setup so much he made his career distributing correspondence college courses. He met my grandmother having sold her courses on mechanical engineering. (Bet ya didn't know women worked as mechanics in the 1920's!)
  - lazyasciiart 6y ago
    30 years ago it enabled my siblings and I to continue to follow our home curriculum while we spent three years posted to a developing country for dad's foreign service job, and my mother to complete a college degree while we were there.
    - a9h74j 6y ago
      Remote learning over potentially-connectionless protocols (e.g. email) also makes sense as a way of supporting those who cannot afford always-on internet connections (or streaming-level bandwidth). This is not a small number even in the developed world, and could grow larger under a collapse.
zdw 6y ago
Public access (any citizen being able to get on the Cable network) is different than educational access (only educational content) and Government access (city and county council meetings, community bulletin boards, etc.). These collectively made up "PEG access", and may have been a single organization or multiple depending on the municipality. Cable companies tended to view these as pure cost centers, and have tried to get rid of them through legislation. Source: I used to work at a public access station. These were hit hard by the internet, when YouTube made it easy to put whatever video you wanted online, which was much more difficult to do with any sort of quality before the early 2000's. The public access channels that have survived/thrived embraced teaching the public videography, lighting, sound, editing, etc.
- jcrawfordor 6y ago
  This is the modern landscape, but the television example I mentioned (and actually most of the examples I know of offhand that remain successful today) actually predates the creation of the cable access programs, it originated as an OTA channel pre-cable (in this area). Without actually having researched it too much, I suspect the educational access program is too restrictive for a pivot to PBS affiliate due to service area limitations. You could view the educational access program as a failed attempt to bolster these types of services. There are definitely active educational access stations but I'm not aware of any case where they're still used to deliver teleinstruction - would love to hear about any that do.
  - lazyasciiart 6y ago
    Seattle Public Schools has maintained their TV station. I'm not familiar with it pre-covid but they were announcing broadcast material when schools closed https://twitter.com/SeaPubSchools/status/1245841000171479046?s=20 https://twitter.com/SeaPubSchools/status/1245841000171479046...
ghaff 6y ago
Broadcast is relatively easy. And one of the problems with e.g. MOOCs (for the most part) is they "solved" the problem of video lectures--which was not actually much of a problem. And everything else, with a few partial exceptions, didn't really work very well. And it's the same problem with online learning generally beyond low (maybe 10 people or so?) scale. Many of us are in larger meetings of course, but that mostly works because most people are just watching (or, more likely, half-watching). It's mostly the same thing with events. Effectively or actually pre-recorded video is fine but that's just YouTube videos. Even chat doesn't work very well once scale goes up and I haven't seen anything that does a great job of the hallway track.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > It's mostly the same thing with events. Effectively or actually pre-recorded video is fine but that's just YouTube videos. Even chat doesn't work very well once scale goes up and I haven't seen anything that does a great job of the hallway track. Can some form of "Second Life"-style VR improve the situation somehow? VR is much overhyped but perhaps it could be a potential solution.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I doubt it. The problem isn't so much the bandwidth but the serendipity. I got at least peripherally sucked into the Second Life hype and I'm very unconvinced VR was the missing ingredient.
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      > The problem isn't so much the bandwidth but the serendipity. It is what I meant. Can the "hallway track" experience somehow be simulated in VR or MMORPG to improve the interactivity between participants? It doesn't sound like a practical idea, sure, but I don't think it's stupid enough to be excluded from investigation. On second thought, a simulation in video games isn't a particularly new idea, there must be a good collection of researches and conclusions already. I should look it up on Google Scholar someday to answer my own question...
m463 6y ago
I think the VCR replaced all that. :)

leetrout 6y ago

Fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

gxqoz 6y ago

And before this there was correspondence learning (i.e. learning via snail mail). Many technologies have been pitched as being transformational for education. Often they have some impact but don't live up to the hype.

WalterBright 6y ago
100 years ago correspondence courses enabled people who could not afford college get college degrees. My grandfather earned a college degree this way, and liked the setup so much he made his career distributing correspondence college courses. He met my grandmother having sold her courses on mechanical engineering. (Bet ya didn't know women worked as mechanics in the 1920's!)
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  30 years ago it enabled my siblings and I to continue to follow our home curriculum while we spent three years posted to a developing country for dad's foreign service job, and my mother to complete a college degree while we were there.
  - a9h74j 6y ago
    Remote learning over potentially-connectionless protocols (e.g. email) also makes sense as a way of supporting those who cannot afford always-on internet connections (or streaming-level bandwidth). This is not a small number even in the developed world, and could grow larger under a collapse.

zdw 6y ago

Public access (any citizen being able to get on the Cable network) is different than educational access (only educational content) and Government access (city and county council meetings, community bulletin boards, etc.). These collectively made up "PEG access", and may have been a single organization or multiple depending on the municipality. Cable companies tended to view these as pure cost centers, and have tried to get rid of them through legislation. Source: I used to work at a public access station. These were hit hard by the internet, when YouTube made it easy to put whatever video you wanted online, which was much more difficult to do with any sort of quality before the early 2000's. The public access channels that have survived/thrived embraced teaching the public videography, lighting, sound, editing, etc.

jcrawfordor 6y ago
This is the modern landscape, but the television example I mentioned (and actually most of the examples I know of offhand that remain successful today) actually predates the creation of the cable access programs, it originated as an OTA channel pre-cable (in this area). Without actually having researched it too much, I suspect the educational access program is too restrictive for a pivot to PBS affiliate due to service area limitations. You could view the educational access program as a failed attempt to bolster these types of services. There are definitely active educational access stations but I'm not aware of any case where they're still used to deliver teleinstruction - would love to hear about any that do.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  Seattle Public Schools has maintained their TV station. I'm not familiar with it pre-covid but they were announcing broadcast material when schools closed https://twitter.com/SeaPubSchools/status/1245841000171479046?s=20 https://twitter.com/SeaPubSchools/status/1245841000171479046...

ghaff 6y ago

Broadcast is relatively easy. And one of the problems with e.g. MOOCs (for the most part) is they "solved" the problem of video lectures--which was not actually much of a problem. And everything else, with a few partial exceptions, didn't really work very well. And it's the same problem with online learning generally beyond low (maybe 10 people or so?) scale. Many of us are in larger meetings of course, but that mostly works because most people are just watching (or, more likely, half-watching). It's mostly the same thing with events. Effectively or actually pre-recorded video is fine but that's just YouTube videos. Even chat doesn't work very well once scale goes up and I haven't seen anything that does a great job of the hallway track.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> It's mostly the same thing with events. Effectively or actually pre-recorded video is fine but that's just YouTube videos. Even chat doesn't work very well once scale goes up and I haven't seen anything that does a great job of the hallway track. Can some form of "Second Life"-style VR improve the situation somehow? VR is much overhyped but perhaps it could be a potential solution.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I doubt it. The problem isn't so much the bandwidth but the serendipity. I got at least peripherally sucked into the Second Life hype and I'm very unconvinced VR was the missing ingredient.
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    > The problem isn't so much the bandwidth but the serendipity. It is what I meant. Can the "hallway track" experience somehow be simulated in VR or MMORPG to improve the interactivity between participants? It doesn't sound like a practical idea, sure, but I don't think it's stupid enough to be excluded from investigation. On second thought, a simulation in video games isn't a particularly new idea, there must be a good collection of researches and conclusions already. I should look it up on Google Scholar someday to answer my own question...

m463 6y ago

I think the VCR replaced all that. :)