This column is reprinted from the Technology department of the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (JAAL). It contains the following sections:

• Author's Message
• Issue of the Month
• Websites of the Month
• Glossary

Now that school is nearly out in most northern hemisphere countries, many students (and teachers) may be counting the days -- for when the semester ends and the school doors close, the activity of schooling takes a vacation. We define schooling to be the activity that occurs within a certain space, the classroom, and a certain time, the school day. Despite our strong beliefs about learning beyond school walls and learning throughout life, it is difficult to step away from the equations of (a) learning with school and (b) learning with sitting at a hard classroom desk and staring at a chalkboard.

We have set the center of learning in the classroom, just as surely as the astronomers following Ptolemy placed the center of the solar system within the earth. Today, a heretical group proposes to abolish that placement -- to deny the centrality of both the school building and the school calendar -- and along the way the textbook and perhaps the teacher, too. These 20th-century Copernicans want to allow the earth to move. They see learning, even fully accredited, formal, certificate-driven learning, to be possible any time and anywhere.

Similar claims have been heard before, first with correspondence courses and external degree programs, later with educational radio and television, videocassettes, teleconferences, and similar media. But the integration and expansion of all these tools through the Internet and the dramatically increased accessibility of digital media should make even long-time skeptics look again at how education may change. Economic forces and new technologies may together bring about a Copernican revolution in the nature of formal education, and there is ample evidence of change already.

Many of these changes will be good, and many not so good. What is clear is that the disinterested position is an illusion. We will all be affected by these changes. We can ignore the decisions that are setting the path for 21st-century education, but they will still be made, more often for reasons of cost expediency or profit than for pedagogical principles. This month's column attempts to raise some of the issues that anyone involved in education today ought to consider.

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We put education into a frame, just as an art museum puts its paintings into frames. There is first of all a time frame. Lessons are defined as short time segments, with minilessons even briefer. The day is broken into periods, and school days are defined as specific portions of the week. We specify weeks to compose a semester and define courses or programs in terms of units that break down ultimately into numbers of minutes of study.

Then, there is a space frame. Learning occurs in the classroom, and then later in library carrels or study halls. Specific types of learning occur in certain spaces, such as laboratories or auditoriums. The school building is clearly defined and separate from other structures. Often, there is even a fence around its grounds.

We use other frames as well. Knowledge is typically framed within books, or even within the sole "textbook." The teacher and students are framed within certain roles, as are other participants such as administrators and classroom aides. What we do with what we learn is usually framed as well, perhaps as what's written in a "blue book" or as checkmarks on a multiple-choice quiz.

What would happen if we were to radically alter those frames? Such is the case with online learning today. The virtual school is already a reality; changes are occurring more rapidly than most of us can follow, much less shape. Let's consider just a few of the claims that are being made about these changes and see what they might mean for literacy development and education in general.

Students: Online learning will lead to significant changes in the population that has access to educational resources, especially at the secondary and higher levels. Distance learning has more than a 100-year history. External degrees from open universities are common and well accepted. These programs are particularly attractive to those living in rural areas far removed from centers of higher learning.

The advent of the Internet has now led to an exponential growth in the number of distance course offerings. Where once one could point to a few special cases such as the Open University in the United Kingdom, now virtually every institution of higher education is at least considering online course offerings. As the programs expand, we see the many ways that online education can expand learning opportunities. For many women, who must fit coursework within constraints of family and part-time work, online courses make higher education attainable. Students with disabilities and those who work may all find increased opportunities to learn. One's country, even the language one speaks, may become only a minor barrier to educational access.

Teachers: The role of the teacher will change in dramatic ways. The lecture, already an endangered species in many contexts on pedagogical grounds, may have to be rethought entirely given the emerging technology for high-speed, low-cost delivery of video, or even virtual reality, on demand.

Schooling as an institution: Schools and universities will undergo fundamental reorganizations. The lines between schools, community colleges, technical colleges, universities, museums, nature centers, and workplaces are becoming fuzzy. As more courses are offered online, students will find it easier to continue full-time work while studying. There will be less need for the local college in each community or region. How many institutions of higher learning will survive? One-half of those in operation today? One-tenth? Will students even continue to study through public institutions, or will they turn to corporations or new organizations for coursework?

Commercialization: The technological revolution in the workplace is leading to an increased integration of schooling and work. Moreover, just to use the Internet is to enter into the commercial world. Online education is both a reflection of and a stimulus for a blurring of the lines between students as learners, workers, and consumers. For example, ZapMe! Corporation at www.zapme.com now offers schools (8,000 applications already) a package deal: a network server, a satellite dish, a laser printer, 15 networked personal computers with 17" monitors, software, a customized web browser, e-mail and web page accounts for students, and an educational website. The price? Schools agree to use the computer lab 4 hours a day and let students see the advertisements that pay for the equipment. Moreover, they agree to let ZapMe! collect aggregate data on student web use and viewing preferences.

Curriculum: The nature of what is to be learned will also undoubtedly change. As schooling is tied more to work we will see the benefit of learning that can be used directly in careers. On the other hand, we risk diminishing the many other goals of education, such as promoting a common understanding, developing capable citizens, and enlarging the individual's capacity to appreciate and contribute to the larger culture.

As we think about all these changes, an interesting irony takes shape. The movement promoting learning anywhere and any time builds in part upon our recognition that learning in life is much more than what occurs in the confines of a classroom or a designated time period for a class. Students graduating from a university often describe opportunities to learn from other students and informal learning experiences derived from the environment of the university as being even more important than their formal coursework.

This acknowledgment of life learning is part of what we think about when we respond positively to the rhetoric about learning beyond the walls of the classroom. And yet, the movement to online learning often means that formal education is then reduced to navigating courses divorced from any context of a social institution beyond that provided by an electronic community with limited functions. The concept of learning freed from the constraints of time and space is thus curiously reduced to learning confined within a new frame of asynchronous communication, without the serendipitous experiences that many of us most value. Despite the implicit claims to the contrary of traditional face-to-face education, its greatest contribution may be in what it affords, rather than what it delivers. The new frame may deliver just as well, but in so doing it excludes the anywhere, any time learning that characterizes much of the overall traditional experience.

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The Globewide Network Academy at www.gnacademy.org has numerous annotated resource links for learners from preschool age through graduate school, as well as one of the most extensive course catalogs for distance learning. It lists more than 15,000 distance courses and 1,500 programs. This impressive array depends on submissions from course instructors and program directors. Thus, it includes online courses about South Africa from Spectrum Virtual University, Central Michigan University, and the University of Southern Colorado, but not the extensive set of course offerings from the University of South Africa itself.

Spectrum Virtual University at vu.org emerged from the free clinic movement in the 1960s, when that movement established counseling centers, "safe houses" for teen runaways, and drug education workshops. With the advent of affordable desktop computers, Spectrum began to offer free online courses. It is now one of the largest online learning communities; more than half a million people from 128 countries have attended its online classes.

The University of South Africa, also known as Unisa, at www.unisa.ac.za is the largest university in South Africa. In 1946, it pioneered tertiary distance education, and continues that now using the Internet. There are approximately 130,000 registered Unisa students all over the world.

Answers to many of the FAQs (frequently asked questions) about distance learning are available at pages.prodigy.com/PAUM88A. The University of Houston at Clear Lake, Texas, USA, has a polished FAQ page and several good links at 129.7.160.115/COURSE/DISTEDFAQ/Disted_FAQ.html.

The Open University at www.open.ac.uk is Great Britain's largest teaching institution, offering distance courses since 1971. Its videos and course modules are used worldwide. Check out the virtual study at www-tec.open.ac.uk/systems/st.html. It's an intriguing vision of what learning spaces could be, revealing both exciting possibilities and inherent limitations of digital technologies.

The Peterson's online guide has information about distance education programs at secondary and tertiary levels at www.petersons.com/dlearn. About 100 colleges and universities in the United States are featured with in-depth descriptions of their online learning programs.

Yahoo has an excellent set of links to online learning off its Education page at dir.yahoo.com/Education/Distance_Learning/.

Online training is a rapidly growing area, but many sites are inaccessible, hidden behind corporate firewalls. Nevertheless, various resources are starting to appear in more public arenas. The Training & Development Community Centre at www.tcm.com/trdev/ has an excellent set of links and information about online training. For those interested in learning computer skills, ZDU at www.zdu.com offers a wide range of online computer classesand tutorials.

The Virtual High School at www.vhs.ucsc.edu describes an initiative in California to create an online, fully accredited high school. It has a virtual tour of the campus, which could plausibly include the Open University's virtual study. An especially useful feature is a set of detailed annotations at vhs.ucsc.edu/vhs/hotlinks.htm on education sites supporting Internet-based learning.

The VHS is linked to the California Virtual University at www.california.edu, which ties together the online and distance education offerings of colleges and universities in California.

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Asynchronous communication: the exchange of messages in a medium that does not require the simultaneous presence of the sender and the receiver. By this definition, ordinary postal mail qualifies as asynchronous communication, but the term usually refers to asynchronous electronic communication, such as e-mail.
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Distance learning: Distance education provides a unique opportunity for those who wish to study but cannot attend residential institutions because of personal circumstances or occupational obligations. The term was once synonymous with "correspondence course," and later with educational TV, but has increasingly been used to refer to learning through an array of communication technologies, including video, teleconferences, e-mail, and the World Wide Web. As these tools have emerged as integral components of on-campus courses, distance (i.e., the physical location of the student with respect to the class) has become an increasingly peripheral factor. Thus, the concept of distance learning may fade away as it begins to define aspects of learning in general.
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FAQ, or Frequently Asked Question: Many websites now include a list of questions that users commonly ask along with the answers that have been the most helpful. The compilation of questions and responses has thus become a new genre of collaborative writing.
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Firewall: a network security system that allows a company, government, or other organization to keep its internal network files separate from the larger Internet community.
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Sociotechnical system: a system comprising human activity, spaces, artifacts, tools, and communications media.

Synchronous communication: the exchange of messages in a medium that requires the simultaneous presence of the sender and the receiver (e.g., in an electronic chat system). The line between synchronous and asynchronous is a function of the sociotechnical system, not just the technologies per se. For example, one could use e-mail in a chat-like, synchronous fashion by requiring the "discussants" to be online at the same time.

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