Distance Education Zane Berge Isn\'t

Distance Education

Zane Berge isn't too optimistic about the future of distance education, believing that underlying technologies will continue to facilitate ubiquity, but will not actually improve learning. However, he fails to understand that we are entering an era where our professional and personal lives are blending into the world communities by degrees. Education is establishing a new paradigm of knowledge sharing and continuous growth through lifelong learning via information sharing. Educators are seeking to push toward this paradigm by using tools like social network sites.

The asynchronous virtual classroom offers an opportunity for students to work closely with other professional peers, potentially drawing on a wider range of experience than is possible in a traditional classroom setting. Hanna, Glowacki-Dudka, & Conceicao-Runlee (2000) recognized the importance of social aspects of learning. When learners are allowed to discuss course content with a personal connection to their lives, the connection between information to knowledge is strengthened and critical thinking skills are sharpened.

The merging of technologies and knowledge management combined with the rise of 'collaborative projects' within educational circles has almost made the switch to community- centered learning a predetermined reality. The imperative then is to design and deliver a course that inspires the interaction with the appropriate tools (Summerville & Johnson, 2006). If this is the case social networking sites used in education will shortly become accepted. This would lead us to the belief that the days of lecture and repeat and 'death by PowerPoint bullets' in education are coming to a close and, in turn, its end signals that there is not only a shift in the actual physical delivery of education, but also in our methods of instruction.