Anytime, Anyplace Learning.

As teachers and students turn to the Internet, distance learning is dismantling classroom walls across America. Few educational innovations in recent years have caught the interest of educational policymakers like distance learning. State-sponsored curriculum reforms, reductions in state fiscal revenues, teacher shortages, and an increased desire to broaden educational opportunities for all students have increased the opportunities for using distance learning to deliver instruction. [1] Distance Learning Defined Distance learning is typically defined as the delivery of live instruction from one site to another, or to multiple sites, using audio or video technologies that allow the teacher and students at different sites to interact with each other. Recent developments in communications technology are expanding this basic definition. In the past, if distance learning was to be interactive, students and their teachers separated by distance had to meet at the same time via telecommunications. Under ideal conditions, students at any one site were provided direct contact with their instructor, as well as communication with students at other remote sites during the instructional process. Increasingly, however, programs today do not require that participants meet at the same time. Such programs allow virtually "anytime, anyplace learning." This is particularly true of courses delivered over the Internet. Today's digital revolution and the exponential growth of the Internet have given rise to a vast number of websites and electronic databases that combine text, audio, graphics, and video information, which can be downloaded and viewed on a personal computer. This allows individuals to gather information, keep current on virtually any topic of interest, and communicate with others across the country or around the world on their own time and at their own pace. Not surprisingly, time-insensitive distance learning via the Internet is growing much more rapidly as an educational delivery medium than such time-sensitive delivery systems as satellite, fiber optic, cable, or other TV-based networks. [2] In addition, the infrastructure and telecommunications costs of the Internet are less than other distance learning systems. With the ever-increasing number of Web-based courses, as well as the exponential growth of the Web as an information resource, Bill Rodrigues, vice president and general manager for Dell Computer's K-l2 education business unit, offers a more expanded definition of distance learning: The best term to describe distance learning is anytime, anywhere learning because that implies that learning is not confined to the four walls of the classroom. Through distance learning, learning can take place from anywhere on campus, from home, through peers around the world, through the Internet, or even from a hospital room. Distance learning means not necessarily having a teacher and students physically in the classroom but learning from anywhere via the use of a computer. [3] Learning anytime, anywhere is happening today, and will happen more in the future as access to information and communication improves. There are already a number of online high schools. More important, however, more and more schools across the country are connecting to the Internet, allowing students to learn on their own as well as join other learners in virtual communities linked by technology. Online High Choice 2000, a public charter school in Riverside, California, presents itself as the first totally online public high school in the United States. [4] The school offers a fully certified 7th-through- 12th-grade curriculum, plus adult education programs, online via the Web. The programs are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Tuition, textbooks, and software are free to residents of California, while the basic tuition for out-of-state residents is $175 per class for a nine-week semester, with additional costs for mailing textbooks and materials, depending on location. …