Matt Norman
Online education courses are generally assumed to be those courses completed from your home, but you can also find some online education opportunities from satellite locations. There are some obvious benefits to taking online or distance learning classes from a satellite location, but first you may wonder why anyone would take this route in searching for educational advancement.
Geographic location is arguably the most common reason for seeking out online education courses from a satellite location. Even if you live in a college town, you may want to take classes that are not offered locally. If you don't have even a community college nearby, you may find yourself faced with three equally unappealing options - drop the idea of taking the classes, traveling several hours each time the class meets, or moving. Online education from satellite locations eliminates the need for you to make any of those choices.
It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man’s plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
Online education in the form of distance learning has become a popular option for public and private schools that have trouble recruiting teachers for specific subjects. In order to offer some classes, these schools become satellite locations. They associate themselves with another school that does offer the class and the students at the satellite location have the opportunity to take the class along with students at the main location. Two way communication, including video feed, allow students in both classes to interact with the teacher and with each other. Sometimes, additional satellite locations meet at the same time and it's not unusual for three or four classes to share time and teacher.
The advantage is that students get to interact, ask questions and hear discussion in real time, but aren't required to be physically present at the main classroom. That concept is being offered in locations around the world for a myriad of courses. To find classes available at a satellite location near you, check with local schools, colleges or universities, or your local library. You may be amazed to discover what's offered in the way of online education at satellite locations right in your home town, right around the corner, or even right on your personal computer screen.
About the author:
Books are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Matt Norman is the founder of Easy Distance Learning a website providing information on learning online