Distance Education has traversed four to five 'generations' of technology in its history. These are print, audio/video broadcasting, audio/video teleconferencing, computer aided instruction, e-learning/ online-learning, computer broadcasting/webcasting etc. Yet the radio remains a very viable form, especially in the developing nations, because of its reach. In India the FM Channel is very popular and is being used by universities, to broadcast educational programs of variety on areas such as teacher education, rural development, programs in agriculture for farmers, science education, creative writing, mass communication, in addition to traditional courses in liberal arts, science and business administration. The increasing popularity of mp3 players, PDAs and Smart Phone has provided an additional medium for the distribution of distance education content, and some professors now allow students to listen or even watch video of a course as a Podcast [6]. Some colleges have been working with the U.S. military to distribute entire course content on a PDA to deployed personnel. [7]

Methods 

In Distance Education, students may not be required to be present in a classroom, but that also may be a question of option. As for an electronic classroom or Virtual Learning Environment, it may or may not be a part of a distance education set up. Electronic classrooms can be both on campus and off campus. We would call such institutions as using a 'flexible' delivery mode.

Distance Education may also use all forms of technology, from print to the computer. This range will include radio, television, audio video conferencing, computer aided instruction,
e-learning/on-line learning et al. (E-learning/online-learning are largely synonymous). It is vitally important to examine Moore and Kearsley's work to gain a full understanding of distance education's evolution since the 1960s. Michael Moore, as of 2007 at Penn State University, was a protege of Charles Wedemeyer. It was Wedemeyer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who is very much considered the father of modern distance education in America. From 1964-1968 the Carnegie Foundation funded Wedemeyer's Articulated Instructional Media Project (AIM) which brought in a variety of communications technologies aimed at providing learning to an off-campus population. According to Moore's recounting, AIM impressed the British who imported these ideas and used them to create the first Open University, now called United Kingdom Open University (UKOU) to distinguish it from other open universities which have emerged. UKOU was established in the late 1960s and used television and radio as its primary delivery methodologies, thus placing it in the forefront of applying emerging technologies to learning. It is fair to say that all "open universities" use distance education technologies as delivery methodologies. (* please cite Moore and Kearsley, Distance education: A systems viewpp33-36 for this).

Some educational institutions are integrating distance and on-campus students in college courses. Some courses allow distance students to watch on-campus class meetings live via online streaming video, and display real-time comments from distance students on an online chat board displayed during the lecture, making it possible for real-time discussion between on and off-campus students. In at least one instance, an online course has been run entirely in a 3D virtual world through the popular online community Second Life [8]. This approach has also been used in conjunction with on-campus class meetings, making the separation between distance and on-campus students increasingly insignificant.

In short then, though a range of technology presupposes a distance education 'inventory' it is technological appropriateness and connectivity, such as computer, or for that matter electrical connectivity that should be considered, when we think of the world as a whole, while fitting in technological applications to distance education.