My mom knew a thing or two about instructional technology, distance education and alternate delivery systems back in 1920s SaskatchewanBruce Edwards/The Canadian Press
Now that school is getting back in session, teachers in colleges and universities will be hearing the familiar cry of modern-day administrators: "We must offer more alternate delivery systems to our students. Learning doesn't have to occur in the classroom. Alternate delivery is more economical and more convenient to many of our clients."
My mom didn't use the word "clients" - "We were pupils when I went to school," she said - but she sure knew a thing or two about instructional technology, distance education and alternate delivery systems. She got to see it in action, first hand, back in the late 1920s in Saskatchewan. Here's how it worked.
During those blustery prairie snowfalls (sometimes three feet deep), there was just no way my mom could walk the 10 kilometres to her one-room schoolhouse, even with the help of her brothers and sisters. There was no way her dad was going to take out the horses and wagon to attempt the trip. Realizing the importance of education, parents and school administrators devised an alternate delivery system to allow learning during the worst days of winter. Modern educationalists would say it utilized telephony and was interactive.
Mom described it this way: "The telephone operator would set up a party line and the teacher would give the lessons over the phone. All the pupils listened in from home and participated."
But, wait a minute, how did she and her brothers and sisters all listen in at the same time? (Even though they were in different grades, everyone had the same teacher in the same one-room schoolhouse.) "Oh, that was simple," my mom would explain. "We placed the telephone receiver in a large porcelain mixing bowl on the kitchen table and it amplified the sound. We could all hear just fine."
The interactive part? "We got to tell stories, discuss art work, read plays and get immediate reaction from the other pupils."
Mom conceded that this method wasn't effective for every subject. "Nature study was still best when conducted out-of-doors, and I don't think music or drawing would have worked out."
But she insisted it was pretty good. "We were always careful to use our best diction, so everyone could understand us." It even ensured that her two brothers were on their best behaviour and never pinched the girls or made funny noises. "We had to listen up if we were going to learn."
The crackling of the woodstove in the big country kitchen could be a bit of a distraction, "but you could do it if you wanted to. If you wanted to learn, you just didn't let the distractions get in the way. Some of those snowfalls kept us from school for a week. We couldn't go that long without lessons. How could we ever get ahead?"
Mom just laughed when I asked her if they were worried about "catching anything" over the phone. "Don't be silly, there's no way you could catch a cold or flu virus from someone over the telephone." (Although, during one Montreal smallpox epidemic, all phone company employees were inoculated, leading the public to believe that the disease could be transmitted through the telephone.)
This new technology also led the community to other innovations involving the transmission of radio signals over telephone lines.
"None of the farms had radios, but the telephone company had one. So, we got the operator to hook theirs up to the telephone switchboard, and we could all hear the music, weather and farm broadcasts over our mixing-bowl speaker. It worked great. I liked the music best, especially on a Saturday night."
David Paraffin Turnbull is a real-time teacher at Seneca College in Toronto.