When I first began this class, I thought it would be such a great idea to have videos and voice on each class member’s computer–kind of like being in a traditional classroom (I was afraid to break away from the norm or what I have been used to from day one in a classroom).  If this were the case, I fear that there would be a push toward lecture, note taking, and completing homework as the trend for distance education.  I honestly believe the beauty of learning would be altered. 

Nevertheless, I have given this some more thought, and I have altered my thinking.  Often times I feel that learning should be more individually directed.  It should allow the learner to experiment and discover learning opportunities on their own.  Personally, I have learned more in this class than I could have ever thought of learning in one of my traditional classes (I am not saying that learning cannot take place in a traditional classroom–it can very well happen with the right tools)–it is the push to venture outside of the comfort zone and explore a little.  Moreover, there is a learning community that has developed and we sponge from each other’s discoveries, including findings of our own. 

With this said, it doesn’t mean that video/voice couldn’t be an added feature to distance education.  It could serve as part of a chat and add to the social content of learning, but it doesn’t have to be included in distance education for it to serve as a successful learning environment.  Thus, there are features that are available that allows for video/voice to become part of a DE classroom.  

For example, Skype is a computer program that can be used to make free voice mails over the internet to anyone else that is using Skype. GizmoProject is basically an internet telephone that is free and allows a user to call contacts on Gizmo, their mobile phone or landline for free.  I use yahoo instant messenger and it has an added voice/video feature on it.  This is all part of internet telephony.  Which according to dictionary.com, is a category of hardware and software that enables people to use the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls. For users who have free, or fixed-price Internet access, Internet telephony software essentially provides free telephone calls anywhere in the world. To date, however, Internet telephony does not offer the same quality of telephone service as direct telephone connections, so this is an important fact that would have to be taken into consideration if this function was added to distance education classes.

All in all, this would be such a nice added feature to distance education, but my only question is, what type of program is out there that would help reduce the chaos that could happen when fifteen people are trying to use voice feature and video cam to participate in a class?  On the contrary I am sure there is a place, maybe like the 3-D spaces, that will allow some type of order to an online class chat with voice/video functions, but I would definitely want to have this program to facilitate an online discussion using the voice/video function.