Distance Education - Aussie Style

In the 1950s (loungeroom in the era pictured), children who lived in remote areas of Australia's outback were schooled by short-wave radio sets set up in their homes. Teaching was done by voice only.

I was on the School of the Air when I visited Charleville in the early 1990s, and was impressed with how the teacher made herself understood in a craft instruction topic.

"ASSOA-Images" [William Newman] September 2006. Alice Springs School of the Air 25/08/11

of Charleville School of the Air

Charleville SOTA: Now the largest such centre in the world, employing 10 teachers catering for 385 primary age children within 1000 km of Charleville SOTA had only one teacher and 45 children when it started in 1966.

It provides supplementary material and contact for these children who are already using the Correspondence School material. The Correspondence School concentrates on written work, SOTA on oral, whilst trying to provide a classroom atmosphere for the children.

Schools of the Air bridge the oral communications gap in many ways. They:

Provide a three way communication from teacher to child, child to teacher, and child to child;

Assist the home tutor by explaining problems met in correspondence papers and answering queries directly;

Enrich the written program with music, news and group activities such as plays and clubs.

Develop a sense of closeness and of belonging to a special group or classroom;

Motivate the pupils to improve the quality of response to correspondence lessons;

Increase in pupils the dualities of self-confidence, initiative, self reliance and sense of responsibility; and

Build a concept of a teaching team between the SOTA teacher, the child, the correspondence school teacher and the home tutor.

The child benefits from the feeling that the teacher is close at hand and the knowledge that he or she is being supported by the team approach of SOTA and PCS, and is motivated by hearing the response of his or her peers, to perform well. (Charleville School of the Air, "Information Booklet", 1986, page 3)

Attribution: By Sven Tombers (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

of the School of the Air

June 1951 was when the School of the Air was launched.

Sixty years later in May 2011, every Australian state has a School of the Air (SOTA).

The tyranny of distance has enabled this unique form of education to flourish. Children who live hundreds or even many hundreds of kilometres away from a bricks and mortar school can tune in each day and learn in their homes.

In the past, they used two-way radios, but now with the advent of satellite technology, they can even see their teachers on the computer, and the teachers can see them.

Some of Australia's most isolated children living in remote areas of Australia received the science lesson of their lives in June and July.

Science teacher, Phill Higgins, better known to the children as "Phiggles The Flying Scientist", took to the skies in his tenth annual "hands on" science program to share the fun and logic of science with kids at remote stations in Western Australia.

Information from Australia Post— Phiggles' sponsor.

for isolated Assie kids now

Nowadays, they sit at their computers and learn in real time.

How much easier for the kids.

They can see what the teacher is doing and she can see them via webcam.