Technology+on+education

Major changes have occurred by technology in the life style and education. Distance education was already a field when the Internet became public. The advent of World Wide Web, however, resulted in a means of bridging those gaps, resulting in a drastic restructuring of the field of distance education into two spheres: synchronous and asynchronous education. These are not competing standards but rather distinct approaches which have mutually exclusive goals; consequently, each is particularly suited to specific educational purposes. Despite its recent publicity, distance education is not a new idea. Though the significant difficulty involved in communicating across distances throughout most of human history has made distance education difficult, the events of the last two centuries provide evidence that educators have, in fact, always sought a means of reaching more students. While online education is a natural progression of the distance learning paradigm, however, the Internet itself has one distinct difference from the other media which have been used for distance education: whereas the other media provide standards for specific forms of communication, the Internet is solely a carrier of data itself and leaves it to the receiving client) to interpret that data. The strength of correspondence courses has always been in the ability of a student to study around his or her own schedule, sending assignments back to an instructor for grading. While the postal mail system is more secure today than it has been at any previous time in history, however, it is ultimately limited in its speed by the need to transfer physical materials. The result is a lengthy delay between the submission of an assignment and its return to the student.  The Internet provides a direct equivalent to the postal system ability to deliver documents in its most basic service, electronic mail. E-mail has almost every possible advantage over postal mail: it is free, its delivery is nearly instantaneous, and delivery confirmation can be provided on request. Moreover, the sole aspect of communication which e-mail is unable to replicate, the personal aspect of composing a letter, is not a concern for purposes of educational correspondence. As a result, with regards to correspondence courses, e-mail is not merely a supplement for postal mail but a perfect substitute which actually provides better service than its rival. Before the Internet became public, distance learning was already a mature, established field. However, it was split into three different sub-fields, each of which was set apart from the others by the technological limitations of its respective medium. The introduction of Web-based technology into the field provided a means by which the best aspects of each sub-field could be incorporated into a larger, more inclusive system of distance education. The resulting system includes only two spheres, those of asynchronous and synchronous communication. Because the predominant technologies on which both asynchronous and synchronous education technology depend are Web-based, it can therefore be further concluded that the capabilities of distance education will expand in a manner consistent with the expansion of the Web itself.
 * Technology on education **