Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

on to the other satellite school. Of course this is possible only if the teacher only hasa few lessons to be taught overall, because it takes from 35 to 45 minutes to drivefrom Oulu to Tyrnävä or to Ylikiiminki. Many teachers do like to drive to the satelliteschools whenever it is possible, and the students seem to especially appreciate it.They feel that the teacher is ready to make some efforts for them. They appreciatethat the teacher really would like to get to know them.The second approach follows the principles of distance teaching more closely.It takes place within the Northern Ostrobothnia Distance Teaching Network(NODiTeN; Pohjois-Pohjanmaan etälukioverkosto in Finnish). The teaching andlearning environment needs technical devices such as computers, phones and maybevideos. The system is close to virtual schools, but is more effective, because thereis a closer connection between the student and the teacher. In a virtual school theteacher and the students really do not meet or see each other at all. But in the NorthernOstrobothnia Distance Teaching Network, there are usually two 100-minute videoconferencingsessions per course. During those two lessons, the students and theteacher see each other, and can communicate through videoconferencing. Basically,the sessions have started to resemble normal classes where the difficult parts of thecourse are discussed.The course outlines are presented on the net in a learning environment calledOptima Discendum. Optima provides teachers with possibilities to choose the desiredtype of Web-based learning and decide how to implement it. The workspace is amode in the environment in which the teacher carries out their training or project.In principle, an environment can contain any number of workspaces. The workspacealways has an owner who has administrative rights to the workspace. The supervisor’srole is to create an operational environment in which the venture (or learning activity)is carried out. The supervisor can assign users to the environment as workspacemembers. A user with access rights to one or more workspaces is called a member.Each user automatically has their own folder, created when the user account is createdor imported into the environment. The user’s personal folder is an environment-levelfunction, and therefore available regardless of workspace membership, as long asthe user has an account in Optima. Through the desktop, the user can convenientlyand centrally administer the messages, documents, annotations, bookmarks, andsettings in the environment. Messages and documents can be easily located using asearch engine (Discendium, 2002).There are discussion forums and working environments for each course, whichcontain the goals and specific guidelines and materials needed for the course. Thetype of the course material depends on the teacher. Sometimes the materials aresimilar to virtual schools in that everything is included. However, this is not necessaryas the students may still have textbooks and other resources. The students havegiven feedback that the material provided should be clear and precise. There is somuch information dealing with geographical issues, that the basic guidelines andthe core material were valued as more important than the amount of information.The teachers’ job is thus to sieve the core material as clearly as possible. Back to thebasics is the guideline for a distance teacher.148