Interactive home learning through cable television
This European funded project provides a telematic environment for learning at home using interactive CAble TeleVision (CATV). CATV is nowadays a widespread medium in Europe that is both easy to use and inexpensive. It is a technology easily integrated with other existing technologies and infrastructures that deliver high quality video. Two-way CATV, or hybrid CATV, with Public Service Telephone Networks (PSTN) can be used as the basic infrastructure that, depending upon the availability of peripheral equipment, will provide the basic interaction of one-way video with teletext, as well as a fully two-way video for multimedia applications and videophony. Project partners have already developed and tested different prototypes, addressing the learning requirements of various groups of people. An assimilation course for new citizens in Amsterdam, a skills course for women returning to work in Dublin, an English course for women of Asian extraction in Birmingham and an open university course for unemployed graduated engineers in Lahti, Finland. The choice of these groups has shown that education and service providers can use the available CATV technology in order to meet specific learning needs, through independent and exciting media. The project will also produce a pedagogic design manual, a set of pedagogic criteria and approaches for the future set up of telematics courses using interactive CATV, as well as a functional specifications manual to assist education providers and CATV providers. DOMITEL, aims to prove that existing CATV network infrastructures can offer a flexible and open distance learning environment and may additionally provide a lifelong learning process. People can learn from their homes, independently and above all, address their specific learning needs. As the project has already proved, newcomers, cultural minorities, unemployed professionals, as well as many others, can now have access to learning and educational resources to benefit their social and employment prospects.
