Feature Article September 25, 2003
LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb HomeInternet Delivery an Option for Rural SchoolsBrian Rombough has been involved in Internet Technology (IT) as a teacher at Sydenham High School for years, and last year won an award with his colleague, the late Dick Hopkins, for developing curriculum for delivery through the Internet.
This fall Rombough has been seconded to the Board of Education Office in Kingston to work full-time on developing the IT capacity of the Limestone District School Board. He works in a cubicle in the corner of a large room that he shares with several other people.
With Brian Rombough in this new role, the Limestone Board has joined a consortium of other school boards who are developing curriculum for delivery through the Internet. But not all curriculum development for Internet application is of the same calibre, Rombough has found.
Some of the material Ive found isnt much more than a textbook that has been posted. It makes for nothing more than a correspondence course, using email instead of the post.
Rombough taught Grade 9 geography to Grade 8 students throughout the board last year as an enrichment program while he was still at Sydenham High School. Teaching over the Internet requires about four times as much work for the teacher, he said. It is also more demanding for the students as well. Of the 30 students who signed up for the course, 18 completed it, which is a pretty good average for that sort of situation, he added.
In writing curriculum for Internet application, building in interaction with the instructor and the other students is very important, according to Brian Rombough. For the Limestone Board, he has been looking at software that is available which will allow a real virtual classroom situation to develop, with the use of a kind of chatroom, and even webcam technology.
The beauty of the way this is being developed, says Rombough, is that it compresses the information so much that it does not require the students to have high-speed computers or even fast internet connections to participate.
The largest application for all these developments will occur in the small, rural settings. In schools like North Addington Educaton Centre and Sharbot Lake High School, where numbers dont allow for certain courses to be offered, the online option may be a great advantage. Other applications include continuing education programs, for students who are working during school hours, or for disabled or ill students.
This will only ever be a secondary kind of education. The ideal, and the most efficient way of teaching a course is in the classroom, Rombough maintains, but where the classroom is not available and the students is motivated, this can be a very useful thing, he concludes.
Through sharing of resources in the education consortium, a large number of courses are becoming available. A lot of funding relationships have to be worked out between school boards, especially if students in one board are going to take courses from another board, but the potential for Internet based education can only grow in future years.
It should keep Brian Rombough busily working away in his cubicle at the School Board office for the next three years.
