I’ve been fortunate to have several long visits for education projects and travels around Australia-- I have a passing bit of knowledge mainly that this existed, a very pioneering program in distance education called School of the Air.
This was literally offering school to students in remote regions via terrestrial radio. These still exist in every Australian state/territory except Tasmania now delivering through the internet. I’ver always been intrigued by the ingenuity to teach and learn in this format.
I am hoping we can open a space for anyone else to ask @moodler about the affordances and impact of learning via School of the Air. Or for that matter, I’d like to hear from anyone else with experience, especially form our Australian colleagues or more information about this era of remote teaching and what it achieved. Does anyone else have or know someone who had direct experience in School of the Air?
This seems like a key bit of history to share leading up to the OE Global conference in Brisbane.
What did a “typical” day in School of the Air look like? How much time was spent listening to radio? Was there socialization with other students, did you get to know your classmates? Do you have contact with any who went to school with or know how they fared?
Mount Isa School of the Air looks after approximately 200 children scattered across a massive area – our coverage area is about the size of France. It’s about 800,000 square kilometres, though that changes a little bit each year as we get children from more distant properties or we lose them as they progress onto secondary schools or boarding school. If we have to go and see those children there’s a lot of travel involved, a lot of driving and flying. But we try as much as possible to get out and actually see their properties and meet them at home and see what their situations are.
And a bit of the contact remotely “on the air”
It’s not that different from a conventional school except with our kids, all their work is homework, because we only see them for such a short time each day. Also they really look forward to that 45 minutes on air with me every day because they get to talk to the other kids. Otherwise they are so isolated, there might be just one child on a property whose neighbour might live 200 kilometres away and it gives those kids a sense of belonging to a real class.
And again, in 2007, the prospects for internet delivery not there yet
Internet broadcasts with cameras is probably a little down the track for us. We do use the internet for research, but it’s difficult for the kids because they don’t have broadband and it’s pretty slow, so we find we have to be really patient.
The full story
We’d love to hear from more educators who were part of School of the Air or people who went to school via one.