ABSTRACT
Communication technology has shaped and reshaped our world as radio followed the telegraph, television followed radio, and satellites and computers followed in their turn. Broadcasting and the Internet have, in different generations, been heralded as forces that can transform education. Three questions follow: has communication technology shaped the development of open and distance learning, and if so how? How are the technologies being used? Is it all now changing? Two different ideas have been at play. The first, touched on in previous chapters, has been about the power of a particular technology. Projects have been designed around particular communications media that looked right to address glaring educational needs. Broadcasting has been at the heart of most of these projects. The second idea has been that of combining media: print, broadcasting and face-to-face study. The mixture is common to the radio study groups of Latin America (radio, print, small group, perhaps of a single family), the founding charters of the open universities (across a political divide India and Pakistan both wrote the media-mix idea into their founding documents) and much teacher education (correspondence for educational theory, practical sessions on classroom activity).
