Assignment 4 Chapter 9

1. ASSIGNMENT 4:
MODULE 9
CARLYYASSES
APT 502
INTERNET-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION

2. THE EVOLUTION OF DISTANCE
EDUCATION
■ Distance education has had a rather interesting evolution.
■ Its origins lie in the correspondence programs of the 1800s, facilitated
by postal services.
■ Mail was central to the process.This was true asynchronous instruction,
clearly in Coldeway’s “different place, different time” quadrant.

3. WHAT ISTHE INTERNET, AND WHY DOES
IT MATTER?
■ The Internet is not a single, clearly defined entity, but a
meta-network of interconnected networks that share a
common language,TCP-IP
■ The Internet has no international headquarters or mailing
address, no chief executive officer or board of directors, no
stockholders to whom it must be accountable, and no toll-
free telephone number to call for assistance or information.

4. Architecture of the Internet
■ Tier 1: Backbone Networks and Internet Exchange Points.
■ Tier 2: Regional Networks.
■ Tier 3: InternetService Providers
■ Tier 4: Organizational and Home Networks.

5. Tier 1: Backbone Networks and
Internet Exchange Points.
■ The essential framework is provided by a worldwide
configuration of extremely high-bandwidth networks
called backbones. Backbones may be regional,
national, or international in coverage, and are
typically operated by major telecommunications
carriers such as AT&T, Sprint, and Qwest on a for-
profit basis.

6. Tier 2: Regional Networks.
■ Regional networks operate backbones on a smaller scale, in the United States typically
within a state or among adjacent states, connecting to one or more national or
international backbones.

7. Tier 3: Internet Service Providers.
■ This is perhaps the most important component for distance
educators.The individual Internet service providers (ISPs) are
connected to regional networks and provide dial-up, or direct,
high-speed access to the Internet at the local level.These are
the companies that provide Internet access to schools,
businesses, private homes, and other community entities.

8. Tier 4: Organizational and Home
Networks.
■ These are the local area networks that interconnect
computers within an organization, such as a school, college,
government agency, or company, and provide Internet access
to individuals within those entities. Many persons are now
installing wireless networks in their homes to extend Internet
access to multiple computers via one high-speed connection.

9. Growth of the Internet
■ The evolution of this highly sophisticated, extremely reliable global network, that now
extends to almost every school and more than half the homes in the United States.
However, cautions must be offered, and limitations must be considered. For example:
■ The British Internet services company Netcraft (2007) counted more than 122 million
independentWeb sites in June 2007, up from 50 million reported in May 2004.
■ Surveys by comScore (2007), a company that specializes in Internet metrics, estimated
that almost 750 million persons aged 15 and older worldwide

10. FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNET-BASED
DISTANCE EDUCATION
■ The Internet and the personal computer in general have changed the way we think
about teaching and learning.
■ To teach and learn effectively in an online environment, we must understand the
concepts of student-centered learning and distributed learning.
■ These terms will be essential to our discussions in this chapter about web-based tools
that are available for educational purposes and how they are, or should be, used.