Learn About (or tell us about) School of the Air- Australia's Innovative History in Distance Education

OE Global 2024 Interaction Zone
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I’ve long been fascinated by the programs and efforts made to give learners in remote areas of Australia access to primary and secondary education through School of the Air (Wikipedia link).

Starting in 1951 and spreading to almost every state in the country, School of the Air connected students and teachers over shortwave radio and is still in existence using telephone and internet communications.

The invention of the pedal radio by Alfred Traeger around 1929,and particularly the involvement of educator Adelaide Miethke in formulating and developing the idea of using the existing Royal Flying Doctor Service of radio communications, were pivotal in the establishment of the School of the Air.

The first School of the Air lessons were officially sent from the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Alice Springs on 8 June 1951.The service celebrated its 50th jubilee on 9 May 2001, ahead of the real jubilee on 8 June; and its 70th year on 8 June 2021.

I found via the great Australian resource Trove a copy of the Adelaide Advertiser news paper announcing the first School of the Air.

newpaper article titled World's First School Of Air Opene, rest of text follows

The Alice Springs “School of the Air” was officially opened by the Administrator of the NT ‘Mr. A. R. Driver’ at a ceremony on the lawns of the Alice Flying Doctor base this morning.

Miss Adelaide Miethke told outback children listening to the ceremony that they were taking part in the opening of the first school of the air in the world.

A vote of thanks to Mr. Driver wan moved by Dr J. M. Dwyer, a vice-president of the Flying Doctor service, and seconded by Mr. C. O. Chalmers, at Mc Donald Downs station— 120 miles away— by pedal radio.

Following the ceremony. an actual “school of the air” was conducted by Mr. T. Kissell. a master at the Alice Springs Higher Primary School, who is the school of the air’s general announcer. Children from 12 stations took part by radio in the concert which followed.

Now there’s some educational technology history!

Even better as we heard in an OEGlobal Voices podcast) our own OEGlobal board member and Moodle founder Martin Dougiamas @moodler completed several years of education via School of the Air.

Do you have any experience of know of anyone who learned or taught via School of the Air? We’d love to hear your stories.

Inspiration for “Conference of the Air” for OEGlobal 2024

Conference of the air logo floating on clouds with a multi colored arc of radio waves over a transmission tower
Conference of the air logo floating on clouds with a multi colored arc of radio waves over a transmission tower556×316 42 KB

OEGlobal logo design by @Mario CC BY

This but of history has inspired us to create a means for anyone, anywhere in the world to participate remotely to the Nov 13-15 OEGlobal conference through a platform of internet radio, with help from colleagues at Reclaim Hosting.

What this means is you will be able to “tune in” anytime to the radio station at a web address and hear something any time of day:

Referring to the published schedule (converted to your local time) or just deciding to “tune” in to hear what’s playing via a web browser / mobile device, you can hear

  • Selected live audio streams of conference sessions and also on the ground live activities (e.g. conversations from the conference floor)
  • Listen to recorded sessions that have taken place earlier (especially as they are scheduled when many parts of the globe are asleep)
  • Hear live streams from radio stations around the world
  • Hear sessions recorded from previous OEGlobal conferences or other conferences that have shared content (we are working to line up replay audio from the Open Education 2024 Conference)
  • Listen to scheduled playback of audio content contributed from other educators unable to present/participate - e.g. a presentation in sound, favorite podcast episodes, etc
  • Where possible, experience internet radio volunteers from elsewhere around the world may offer schedule blocks of time for live broadcasts from different parts of the world.

A program will be made available so you can see upcoming blocks of scheduled time.

Calling For Audio

We will be making a form call soon to anyone who wishes to send audio content we can “put in the air” but if you are inspired by our inspiration, let us know via reply or email to podcast@oeglobal.org what you might want to share.

Looking for School of the Air Audio/Video “Hearage”

I made of that word for the audio version of “footage” but I want to schedule a block of time on the radio to play back news stories and documentaries from School of the Air. I did my best combing of YouTube but am hoping some librarians and search gurus out there can find more (video is fine, we will extract audio)

Please find us more!

Stay tuned for more details about Conference of the Air

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I’m doing some searching with the One Search from the State Library of Queensland, one of our conference cohosts and am finding a great deal of articles, photos, books related to School of the Air (with filter set to online / open access resources)

The majority I tried to access required institutional access, but did find this photograph of First Queensland School-of-the-Air broadcast from Cloncurry Base VJI, 1960

Old photograph of woman sitting at large desk, reading from notes, speaking into a microphone with radio equipment behind her
First Queensland School-of-the-Air broadcast from Cloncurry Base VJI, 1960 from State Library of Queensland shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license

School mistress Bid O’Sullivan conducting the first Queensland School-of-the-Air from Cloncurry Base VJI in 1960. Miss O’Sullivan, because of exceptional skills, was brought out of retirement for the task. She remained in service until 70 years old. On leaving the service she was presented with the ‘Cobra’ microphone (seen in this picture) and took up residence at New Farm.

I’d love to see more of the items I found there.