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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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1990-09-17
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EDUCATION, Page 107Beam Me Up, StudentsSatellite TV brings live teachers to far-flung schools
In public education, geography has long been destiny. Crippled
by limited staffs and tight budgets, rural districts have often
found it impossible to offer courses such as Russian and physics
that are considered standard by their more cosmopolitan
counterparts. Now all that is changing, thanks to the arrival of
the electronic classroom. By using interactive video, even small,
disadvantaged schools are gaining access to the most sophisticated
instruction available, and all without losing the human touch.
The formats and course offerings are as varied as the sponsors,
which include federal and state governments, universities,
public-television stations and commercial networks. Unlike Whittle
Communications' Channel One, however, which beams news and ads into
schools on regular television, the electronic classroom enables
instructors and pupils to hear and interact with one another much
as they would in any normal setting. But the visuals are still
one-way: students can see the teacher, but not vice versa.
Televised courses can be a bargain for financially strapped
schools. A district may pay as much as $8,000 for a satellite dish,
cordless phones and the electronic keypads or computer terminals
needed for students to communicate with their long-distance
teachers. That one-time outlay amounts to far less than a
conventional teacher's annual salary. Like network anchors, video
teachers submit to screen tests and often conduct their classes
without a studio audience.
The tele-classroom has been especially valuable in states with
small populations and struggling economies. Last year, when 15 of
the 28 students at Maine's Allagash High School protested the
dearth of humanities courses, the University of Maine decided to
fill the gap. This fall the university will offer more than 20
courses, including elementary French and algebra, to 23 Maine
schools.
Other states are scrambling to enter the video age. Last
January the Kentucky Education Network began beaming
probability-and-statistics classes into 65 far-flung high schools.
By September Virginia expects to have earth stations at every one
of its 289 high schools. Private networks, such as the Texas-based
TI-IN Network, go even further, sending instruction to more than
750 school districts in 29 states.
Most students seem pleased with long-distance learning.
Ninth-grader Vanessa Bryan, one of only 700 residents on Ocracoke
Island, N.C., could not have taken Spanish if her school had not
tapped into the TI-IN Network. Now she and "classmates" in 18
schools across the country receive instruction from a teacher based
in a San Antonio studio. They accept TV tutelage as routine. Says
Vanessa: "It's a good course."
Some public school administrators are concerned, however, that
the new technology will erode their control. Principals have little
leverage over teachers who live hundreds of miles away and do not
teach exclusively in one district. Adolescent daydreaming carries
less of a penalty when students know they can view a lesson on
tape. "We don't play the typical games," says David Benke, who
teaches computer science to pupils from San Isidro, Texas, and
Prescott, Iowa. "You've got to have a student who really wants to
learn."
But in many respects -- even socially -- TV classrooms are
comparable to traditional ones. In Texas, Ramona McDaniel of
Thorndale and Tim Williams of Sabine Pass, more than 250 miles
away, became acquainted through a satellite German class and began
corresponding two years ago. This week Williams will escort
McDaniel to her spring prom. Says McDaniel of the electronic
matchup: "It's a little odd, I guess, but I think it's neat."