Videoconferencing A New Literacy

With the advent of broadband telecommunications and affordable equipment, videoconferencing has emerged to replace expensive and elaborate distance learning systems that had been developed in the early 1980’s. Yet, as we enter the close of the first decade of the 21st century, videoconferencing has not fulfilled its potential. The following chapter describes and poses solutions to the issues of access, equity, student achievement, pedagogical strategies, and the integration of emerging communication and media technologies that if deployed can transform videoconferencing to become a high performance tool for teaching and learning. In addition, as we embrace the millennial generation with unique characteristics that distinguish it from generations that have gone before must acknowledge the global, diverse and politically charged world. As a result, there is also an urgency to deploy videoconferencing with its fullest capacities; this urgency is an embedded theme in the writings that follow.