As radio emerged as a tool for broadcasting in the early 1920s, educational institutions began setting up stations. In many cases, the institutions used the stations to deliver educational material rather than just teach about the new medium. The idea of radio as an educational tool was actively promoted and supported by the United States Office of Education (now the Department of Education), which developed both scripts and recorded programs for educational institutions--it created over 700 programs between 1936 and 1940 alone. Educators similarly touted television as educational tool and a number of colleges of have offered course via that medium. Not surprisingly, educators are now using the Web as a way to deliver courses and course material.
Online courses are not new. Faculty have, with varying degrees of success put syllabi, PowerPoints, and other course material online. Products like Blackboard, WebCT (which have merged), and Texas Tech's own eLearning have attempted to make the process easier. Social networking tools such as MySpace have also been co-opted as educational tools
Other products, have tried to replicate the classroom itself in the virtual world in a synchronous (everyone meeting at the same time) mode. One option for this is a MOO (Multi-user domain, Object-Oriented), a text-based virtual reality system that was originally developed for role playing games, but was rather quickly adopted as an educational tool. Internet-based video-conferencing classrooms go back to at least the mid-1990s and the program CU-SeeMe, which allowed faculty to meet with multiple students to using Webcams.
More recently, many educators have returned to the radio model of education and have begun posting their lectures on iTunes--take a look at the offerings in iTunes University for Texas Tech and other colleges. The idea of interactivity, however, is strong. One option that faculty are now exploring is Second Life. If you haven't been to Second Life yet, you should take a look at the homepage. Options include creating virtual worlds as well as building virtual campuses. Check out EDTech Island and see what the folks at Linden have to say about options for educators.
What are your thoughts on new media and education? In your post, I would like you to address a)have you had classes with new media components? b)if so, describe what you liked and what you didn't like c)having looked at Second Life a bit, explain why you think it is a good or a bad environment for learning.
For class, be prepared to discuss the above questions as well as your ideas on how you think new media could be better used in education.
