My Word with Douglas E. Welch

These days students, teachers, professors, and parents are figuring out an awful lot about how distance learning works. But teaching and learning remotely is not a brand-new thing. As microbiologist Roy D. Sleator writes, it’s actually much older than Zoom, Google Classroom, or even the internet itself.

Sleator begins the history of distance learning in 1728. That’s when shorthand teacher Caleb Phillips bought an ad in the Boston Gazette promising that students “may by having the several lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston.”

The scientists running Seattle-based Oceans Initiative more typically apply their marine mammal expertise to research on endangered orcas or conservation of white-sided dolphins in Washington’s Puget Sound.

But the upside-down world of the new coronavirus and the closure of their nearly 6-year-old daughter’s school inspired them this week to launch what they’ve dubbed their Virtual Marine Biology Camp.