The Gaylen Kelley Distance Education Laboratory at the Boston University School of Education will help teachers and students to communicate over any distance - either across the city or across the globe.   In addition to supporting activities such as email, the instructional use of the WWW, and video conferencing that have become normal extensions of university education, the Gaylen Kelley Distance Education Laboratory also will allow courses to be conducted both synchronously and asynchronously. Through making modern technologies available to our educational community, the Gaylen Kelley Distance Education Laboratory will be the focal point of thoughtful, interactive distance education for students, faculty and alumni of the School of Education.

There are three premises guiding the establishment of the Kelley Distance Education Laboratory. First, technology will continue to be a rich resource for teachers and learners.  The possibilities for improved communication and expanded research will continue to grow. Students and faculty at the School of Education will have access to the great body of information made available by technology.  Our distance education laboratory will help our community mine the rich resources of the electronic universe as well as to gain experience in distinguishing between those resources that support our objectives and those that distract from them.

Second, teaching and learning requires thoughtful and sustainable interaction between teacher and learner. The Kelley Distance Education Laboratory will be designed, constructed, and evaluated based on how well it can support the kinds of interaction necessary to achieve the high academic standards of Boston University.  The Kelley Distance Education Laboratory is committed to providing a system that enables complex communcations with fewer constraints of time and place.

Third, the technologies capable of supporting interactive learning must be easily accessible to the students and faculty of the School of Education.  Educators, at the university level and the K-12 level, are required to work long hours and perform many diverse tasks to deliver the best possible services to learners.   An effective distance education facility must be close at hand to all members of the School of Education community.  The Kelley Distance Education Laboratory, housed in the Instructional Materials Center at SED, will be easily accessible to all of our faculty and students.

Building from these premises, the Gaylen Kelley Distance Education Laboratory Fund will become a facility that makes readily available the most highly interactive forms of technology-based distance education, including two-way audio and video.

The laboratory will be a true legacy to the work and the spirit of Dr. Gaylen Kelley, who for over 35 years unselfishly shared his knowledge and wisdom. Through Dr. Kelley's teaching, guidance, and generosity, many of his students have gone on to direct the educational use of technology in education, industry, government, and medicine world wide. It is our sincere hope that by founding the Gaylen Kelley Distance Education Laboratory, his fine work will be extended to those who avail themselves of the teaching and research of the faculty of the School of Education wherever they might be.

We need your help to make the Gaylen Kelley Distance Education Laboratory(GK-DEL) a reality.  Although Boston University has generously supported this plan by making physical space and human resources available, we need secure financial support to appropriately equip the laboratory and to build our network of supporters and potential users of the services at the laboratory. If every one of us, the beneficiaries of Dr. Kelley's guidance as well as more recent alumni, can contribute financially, and by carrying this message to other potential donors, the Gaylen Kelley Distance Education Laboratory soon will allow us to extend our teaching and learning.  For more information about the laboratory, or to make a donation to help build it, please contact me or Rachel O'Boyle, Development Officer for the School of Education, whose mailing address is School of Education, 621 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215, phone: (617) 353-2950, email: rm@bu.edu.

Sincerely,
 
 

David Whittier, Ed. D.
Coordinator, Program in Educational Media & Technology
Director, IMC
School of Education
605 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston, MA 02215

phone: 617-353-3181; fax: 617-353-3924;

email: whittier@bu.edu