NEW OPPORTUNITIES IN SATELLITE TELE-EDUCATION

One of the great opportunities of our times may be the creative and effective combination of satellite technology with the needs of global education. Experiments of the last two decades will be described to show how useful and appropriate satellite delivered tele-education has been in both the developed and developing countries of the world. Wide-band as well as narrow-band techniques have been proven effective in such diverse locations as China, India, the South Pacific, East Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, and the United States among many others. Most importantly new interactive techniques and new distant learning concepts that go beyond the traditional classroom approach to education have emerged in the past decade. Even more exciting totally new approaches such as the so-called electronic tutor first envisioned by Arthur C. Clarke almost 20 years ago are now becoming technologically possible. This article thus seeks to explore the past, the present and the exciting future of satellite tele-education in the 21st Century.