Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike Hansgen, who shares this news/media from the BBC World Service:
Could broadcasting school lessons solve Africa’s education crisis? The BBC spoke to a pupil in the Democratic Republic of Congo who is learning through the radio.
Click here to view on the BBC World Service website.
At Ears To Our World we’ve long appreciated the power of radio to spread information in rural and remote parts of the world: it’s effective, accessible and essentially free to the listener. Viva la radio!
Back in the 50’s NBC had college literature courses on radio. They can be obtained on archive.org.
As a youngster who was a fan of radio, I dreamed of using radio to educate Africa. Of course, my interest was in the radios themselves. Finally radio is reaching its potential as a medium.
Glad to hear this, it could be a big help. Didn’t Australia do this for families in the Outback many years ago?
You’re probably thinking of the various “School of The Air” programmes, which were more like correspondence courses supported by ham nets than the straight broadcast this seems to be.
They’re still running in several states, though they’ve been wound back a lot over the years and today tend to be on-line correspondence supported by video/audio calls & conferencing.
Yes, I think I knew about it even before an interest in radio.
I remember looking it up a few years back, and it was integrated with the Flying Doctor service. It was for the outback, and I guess since there were radios for emergency purposes, they used the radios for school. Since they were two-way, the kids could interact. It seemed so neat at the time.
Michael
Yes, that’s the one 😉 Originally they shared RFDS frequencies & were often integrated with the local RFDS offices. As they grew they gradually moved out on their own or co-located with a physical school, & eventually during the 80’s they moved to their own frequencies.
By the late 90’s / early 00’s many here in Queensland had moved to dial-in phone bridge systems (at the time, Telstra made a big point of talking this up as an “innovation” “powered” by their DRCS expansion), and since then most have moved to online teaching using satellite / NBN internet. Though I think some in WA, and maybe NSW, might still use 2-way radio a bit?
A couple of the Qld SDE/SOTA websites – Charleville https://charlevisde.eq.edu.au/ and Mt. Isa http://www.mtisasde.eq.edu.au/ – have some current & historical information, and you can probably find similar information online about the NSW, SA, NT, & WA schools.