About Distance Education Administrators and Other

The distance education administrators should have the capabilities to make policies, determine what courses and programs can be delivered. They also need to know the rights that students should have. Furthermore, they must understand the ways of how to make distance education more effective and make distance faculty happy to work. Generally speaking, the people who are in this permission need to know the whole process and all kinds of aspects of distance education in order to make the distance education system running well.As we all noticed that the position of distance education administrator is now very popular and even some universities set their programs direct this area. Some programs related to distance education administrators think that a degree in educational administration is usually designed to prepare already teaching professionals or those in lower level administration positions within schools or school. However, the graduates from these programs are not well prepared for the distance learning or online learning area because the people who want to work in this area need to gain the knowledge of online learning and distance learning. Especially need to know the process, feature and differences between this new style of learning and traditional learning.As it talked in this report that this is because some teachers may need connections to colleagues with similar interests, responsibilities, and challenges. It is true that on one hand learning is a process of hard working, on the other hand many schools do not have a learning environment. For example, many schools only have one or two teachers teaching a certain course, such as math, so they are the authority in that area in that school: what are you expecting him or her to learn? The reasons, such as inadequate training, limited time, unavailability of mentoring and funding, poor support structure, limited access to technology, and feelings of isolation, or others maybe part of the reasons, however, I think the biggest problem is personal: lacking of hard working spirit. This is different from person to person. We see some teachers can do a better job, however, others cannot in a same situation. So I think if the teachers want to gain the abilities of using new technology, they can find a way to reach the resource.   Imagine being the only physics teacher in a school. Under normal school conditions, you could go for weeks or months without contact with another physics teacher. Sharing teaching strategies and content with colleagues or even getting outside advice or constructive criticism-this just isn’t a part of your world. The biggest issue here is that it is impossible that a distance teacher can design, construct or teach well an online or distance course if he or she does not have technology knowledge. Because, at least, he or she does not know how to incorporate the technology into their constructions and also selecting an appropriate media is also a problem to them.The trend is that the distance learning, online learning and virtual schools are getting more popular nowadays. This does not mean they are better than the traditional ways of learning. However, at least they are accepted by some people. It is hard to say which one is better: virtual school or traditional school, because this is up what course you are learning, what is the content of this course and what you are expected to learn from this course. There is no relationship between the virtual high schools and virtual colleges or universities. In my opinion, whether we need to deliver a course through technology is totally up to the content itself. If learners can learn well through a distance learning system, it is fine to deliver it online. If not, I think the traditional way may be better. Virtual schools are positive trend to education if we can use it appropriately. Furthermore, virtual schools are still in its process of developing. With the development of technology, it will getting better and better in the future.   Reference: Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of Distance education, Michael Simoson, 2000.The Power of the Internet for Learning: Moving from Promise to Practicehttp://interact.hpcnet.org/webcommission/index.htm#report