Abstract

The United States Department of Education Star Schools grant program funds innovative projects applying distance technology in education. One such grant resulting in the de-velopment of two instructional programs for elementary grades, Elementary German and Geonauts. Each of these projects featured a series of one-way video, two-way audio broadcasts and provided supplemental materials including teacher's guides, workbooks, and suggested activities. This paper reports the results of a study examining the how pro-grams are used, importance of interaction and the role of the classroom teacher. Data was gathered through mailout sur-veys and site visits. Although interaction between an on-screen teacher and distance students has long been regarded as an important advantage of live televised instruction, the result of this two-year evaluation study suggest that, for ele-mentary school students, interaction by asynchronous means may be at least as effective as interaction during broadcasts. Also, most schools use the programs in a videotape format, rather than live. These results suggest a new paradigm for us-ing distance education technology for the elementary grades.

Citation

Gunawardena, C.N., Lowe, C.A., Murrell, W.G., Zittle, R.H., Zittle, F. & Boverie, P. (2000). Designing Satellite Instruction for Elementary Students: Importance of the Classroom Teacher. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 6(2), 107-122. Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved March 6, 2021 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/8014/.

© 2000 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

Keywords

• Distance Education
• Educational Technology
• Elementary Education
• Instructional Materials
• Schools