Three Interesting Things....

I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Saba's article on Distance Education and eLearning!

Of particular interest to me was the following:

1) Sesame Street as Distance Ed via television. First of all, as a person who would like to have children one day....in a far away galaxy....fearing the barrage of media will ultimately corrupt my offspring, I had to laugh in spite of myself: probably 50% of my learning (3-4 years old) took place through watching Sesame Street! I did a little more research on the program and found that 1) the original series has been televised in more than 120 countries; 2) a 1996 survey found that 95% of preschoolers watched the program by the age of three; 3) "Sesame Street was built around a single, breakthrough insight: that if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them" (findings adapted from Wikipedia.org)

2) The Department of Defense and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in 1997,
initiated Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL). From ADL, a program with the vast goal of distributing learning at any place and any time and for individual learner needs, came something most of us have probably heard about: Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM).

3) Transactional Distance was interesting to me because it literally had nothing to do with distance in terms of measurement. (Although, I would like to know more about how mathematical distance impacts culture and therefore, distance eductation). It seems to suggest that dialog, not distance, is what bridges the gap between learner and teacher (and content). I am wondering how true this is, though, for learners who do not like to verbally participate?