Virtual Education

An excellent article by David Essex as published in ProAV Online shows why the sooner the digital divide is fully bridged the better, and why professional AV (Audio/Visual) and distance learning is turning into a near perfect marriage.

According to the article, experts now say that as distance learning evolves from synchronous (live) conferencing to asynchronous (on-demand) access it also much better suits today's flexible teaching and learning styles.

Distance learning is also becoming more distributed, with end-points as likely to be small conference rooms, or personal electronic devices, as an AV-heavy auditorium. The technical reasons for this evolution are cheaper (and more ubiquitous) bandwidth and a broader adoption of the H.264 video-compression standard.

At the same time, we see Voice over IP (VoIP) continue to outmuscle the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), now making audio conferencing more intelligent, adaptable, and affordable.

As a result, says Robert Abbott, director of product management at Smart Technologies, a maker of whiteboards and other input devices, "the line between remote and in-room becomes largely irrelevant. Our philosophy is that distance learning is not about the one special room on our campus, it's about every classroom."

Also, the definition of "remote" is has begun to blur. As an example, fifty percent of on-campus students at one state college, who easily could have attended online courses in person, chose instead, for whatever reason, to attend them online, attending instead from the dorm or from a smaller classroom.

The same principle can of course be extended to any high-bandwidth Internet endpoint, whether just across the street, or at the very edge of the grid.

Of course, this is based on the assumption that the bandwidth exists to facilitate such distance learning, which where the stimulus packages are now beginning to make great strides.

Again, for the full--and very informative--article, go here.