Lessons learned at Australia’s vast Outback classroom

Like any Australian child, Cameron Smith attends school every weekday, but with his teacher and fellow pupils spread hundreds of km across the vast Outback his “classroom” is considered the largest on earth.
Children from Australia’s remote central desert regions have for decades been tutored by the ground-breaking Alice Springs School of the Air, which once provided instruction over radio and is considered a pioneer of distance education.
For students such as 12-year-old Cameron, it provides an interaction with other children and teachers that would otherwise be sorely lacking in the country’s sparsely populated interior.
“There’s one other boy in my class, he’s 500 km (300 miles) away,” Cameron said via a live video feed from the cattle station where he lives, speaking to his teacher 370 km away in Alice Springs, itself a remote town close to the geographic center of vast Australia.
The Alice Springs School of the Air prides itself on having the biggest “classroom” on earth, with students scattered over some 1.3 million square km (260,000 square miles) — an area about twice the size of France.
The first of its kind anywhere in the world when it opened in 1951, the school now has about 145 students who communicate with their teachers and peers using satellite-backed connections.
“Some of the (cattle) stations, there’s only one child on them, so that’s difficult for them I think too with the lack of interaction with other kids,” said assistant principal Mel Phillips as she stood in front of a map flagging all her students in the Northern Territory, home to the monolithic red rock Uluru.
But in many respects, the school is like any other — students attend Monday to Friday, mostly from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 pm, there is roll call and homework, and they must complete worksheets during the day.
The difference is in the delivery, with each child’s home hooked up via satellite and provided with a computer, printer and microphone so they can communicate on the government-run network.
The hardware is supplied by the school whether or not their parents pay the modest annual voluntary contribution of 410-500 Australian dollars ($400-$490).
While the school once relied on pedal-powered radios, then high-frequency radio, satellite Internet is now the norm.
The system allows almost instant interaction between the teachers in the studios in Alice Springs and the students at their computers — which can be up to 1,300 km away, although there remains a slight time lag in the connection.
Pupils can see and hear their teachers, and can speak and be heard by their classmates.