During the past three weeks, I have found one great advantage of Distance Education is the access to information.  I have learned so much and am motivated to learn more.  I know that on my own, I would have not taken the time to explore things like gator feeds and blogs.  Another advantage to DE is that one can work at his/her own pace on his/her own time schedule.  This has helped me because weekends are my time to catch up and devote to college work.  During the week is planning and grading papers once I am home and also spending time with my husband.  A third advantage to DE is the access it gives people to other people.  If it were not for this class, I would not have met the people in the class nor connected with the math teachers at TappedIn.

A disadvantage of DE is that it is not readily available to everyone.  Schools have come a long way in acquiring the technology to make DE possible, yet many teachers do not know DE resources are available.  Just as Kearsley said, the biggest advantage of networks for K-12 is an online library system.  Many home users do not have access to fast networking, so they are not able to take advantage of the DE resources, such as video streaming.

Using DE as a teacher has its advantages.  I can find more resources to use in my classroom.  I can connect with people who are interested in math like I am.  If I have a student on homebound, then I could communicate with them about the assignments as long as they had network resources at home.  My students can eventually work on collaborative projects with students at other schools.  I could not come up with a reason why I would not want to use DE with my students.

As I read the distance learning definitions posted by others, I realized that my own definition was very limited based on my own experience.  I was looking at it from a concrete point of view (using technology to bring learners and teachers together).  From reading others’ posts, they too realized that there is so much involved with the concept of distance learning.  My favorite postings were from Gloria, Barbara, Remona, and Kim.  Barbara pointed out how important immediate feedback was to the learning process.  This fact is also true in our own classrooms.  Barbara said that she felt her definition was small-minded (as I did), but I know that as this course progresses, all of us can go back and write a more indepth definition based on our experiences.  Remona brought up to point that distance learning in eastern Kentucky involved the video relay.  I had one course at MSU with Mattie Decker using this approach.  It was specifically called a distance learning course.  Kim said that our definitions are limited to our experiences.  It now seems to be that the heart of distance learning is the word learning, just as Dr. Lowell said in his own definition of distance learning.  Learning requires communication.

My definition of Distance Learning is using the Internet to bring together students and teachers together into an electronic classroom to learn.  The biggest advantage to distance learning is that it gives flexibility to people because they join the classroom on their time schedule.  There is no travel time, thereby saving time and fuel costs.  It allows for a more visual classroom.  Instructors can post videos and links to web sites for students to use.  Instead of verbal conversations, student communicate through discussion boards, which allows other students to go back and review conversations without recalling them from memory.  Distance learning is all about communication.  It turns the traditional classroom (which tends to be lecture) into a classroom where everyone can feel as if they are part of the classroom.  Distance learning classrooms are also paperless, thereby making them enviromentally friendly.