Social and Economic Technology - 4.2. Promotional Descriptions
What in Secotek is new about Distance Learning?
Experiments have taken place using distance learning for children, but these have mainly concentrated on being inter school. The children are inherently assumed to already physically be at their school of choice. This makes these trials irrelevant to the direct problems of education in rural areas being addressed by Secotek.
To date, most forms of distance learning have involved building the teaching methods around the technology, and not building technology for the teaching methods. This would not be so with Secotek.
The concept of parental choice for schooling in many rural areas is practically a non starter. There is quite often only one school within practical range. If parents decline that one school, the transport burden on the parent is formidable. This puts rural children at a definite disadvantage.
Even so, transport is of real significance to the educational budget, but it does not buy teachers.
The daily Transportation children miles away from home destroys rural culture. This has been shown time and time again.
What goes on in the buses is not good for the education of the children.
The problems are even more acute in the case of special needs children.
The solution is to develop a distance learning system that a teacher can take a physically spread out class, but use as far a possible convention teaching techniques. Teachers need to be able to transport their skills and expertise. This does not necessarily mean physical transport. Doing it electronically could:-
Drastically expand parental choice.
Make more specialist classes viable when interest in the subject is spread thinly over a wide area.
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