The Reading Writing Hotline was originally conceived as phone support for viewers of an educational TV series. Celebrating it's 30th anniversary next year, it has evolved to become a national referral service for learners, as well as an information and advisory service for industry and community. It recorded a significant increase in call numbers…

A review of related research found the use of recorded lecture videos (RLVs) in undergraduate mathematics to be negatively correlated with academic performance. To investigate this correlation, an initial study found students' regular RLV use to be linked to surface approaches to learning. The present study continued this investigation and was…

Television, like other media, can work as a platform for promoting learning. This article illustrates the value of multimodal discourse analysis for evaluating the potential of a children's television show as a vehicle for fostering knowledge and skills in a specific subject area. Drawing on social semiotic principles and systemic functional genre…

Surprisingly, distance education is quite an old concept. Its origins date back to the first correspondence-based course, which took place via the postal service in Boston, USA, in the 18th century. Rapid technological developments, especially in video and audio streaming, have increased the availability of such courses and moved learning into the…

In this paper, I examine the provenance of distance education or "teledidactics" in Australia. I take as my case studies the New South Wales Correspondence School and the School of the Air and suggest that their emergence was underpinned by a desire on the part of educational and broadcasting bureaucrats to increase the equity of school…

Television captioning has great potential to provide deaf children with access to the audio track of programmes. However, use of captions may be limited by the lower English literacy skills of the deaf population compared to the general population. Here, we investigate how the rate of caption delivery affects the comprehension of educational…

The aim of this article is to survey the emergence of this educational technology under the unique conditions of the Australian setting." Appended are 14 references. (Author/AA)

An account of first impression by the author, of educational media facilities and services developed in Australia and New Zealand. (HB)

Drawing on the experiences of several countries, the author describes satellite technology, discusses the feasibility of satellite use in traditional educational institutions, and analyzes the role of satellites in social development. (SK)

Papers presented at the 25th annual conference of the Australia College of Education addressed four major themes: The Brave New World of 1984; The Communications Revolution; Being Human in a Technological Age; and Implications of the Technological Society of Education. Papers in this volume include: (1) "The Challenge of Education in the…

A discussion of prospects for the Commonwealth Educational Broadcasting conference scheduled for Sydney, Australia, in 1975. (Author/HB)

A brief description of ABC's Training School for overseas broadcasters located in Sydney, Australia. (HB)