Even in the embryonic stage, the faculty behind the Gaylen Kelley Distance Education Laboratory are establishing relationships and laying the groundwork for partnerships both locally and across the globe.

Locally, the designers of the laboratory have reached out to faculty at the School of Education (SED) to find ways to extend the work of existing programs.  School of Education programs in Early Childhood Education, Science Education through the Microcosmos curriculum, and the teaching of writing have already expressed a desire to enhance their teaching through distance education.  These programs are, of course, in addition to many courses in the program in Educational Media and Technology that may be adapted to a distance education format.

Other local opportunities for distance education come from schools associated with Boston University.  The Concord Public Schools, for example, long a partner with SED in teacher education, wishes to expand their contact with School of Education students and faculty.  Based on a unique, and successful experiment conducted from the fall of 1998 through the spring of 2000, SED undergraduates developed software customized for use in classrooms in Concord that supported the local teacher's curriculum.  Distance education resources would be a welcome supplement to the relationships created through long bus and car rides between Boston and Concord.

Globally, the program in Educational Media & Technology has created a framework for a distance education partnership between Boston University School of Education and the University of Fort Hare in Alice, South Africa.  School of Education faculty have much to offer to South African school teachers who were previously deprived of education and resources by the policies of apartheid.  This component of our proposed partnership focuses on helping teachers in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa to learn about our research and experience with supporting teaching and learning with technology.  In addition, we also hope to provide assistance and support as teachers plan for and secure equipment for basic technology as well as software and video resources for their own curricula.

The linkage between the Boston University School of Education and the University of Fort Hare could support American school teachers as well by giving them access to documents and human resources that could help to describe and explain the history and current status of race relations, economic, social, and political concerns in South Africa.  The University of Fort Hare could, for example, offer to the School of Education assistance in developing a social studies curriculum concerning issues of democracy, freedom, and justice that are sharply etched in the history, culture, and current affairs of South Africa. This curriculum could focus on these issues against the backdrop of the emergence of South Africa from apartheid, and its purpose will be to enlarge and inform the understanding of American students in grades 6 to 12 about these issues. These issues in South Africa will be vividly highlighted by examining the similarities and differences in race relations in South Africa and in the US. The purpose is also, by extension, to invigorate student's understanding of American history, especially the revolutionary war, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the civil rights movement. These events in both American and South African history, while separated in space and time, offer tremendous opportunities to compare, contrast, and learn from each other.