Many progressive thinkers in the online education arena believe that as we move forward with on-line education, it will become more like broadcasting. So the communication skills, teaching and learning experience and technological sophistication of contemporary community broadcasters are an exciting resource for educators at all levels. Educators can learn much from broadcasters about effective oral communication and production techniques, not to mention the exciting world of sound.

Radio Adelaide (formerly 5UV) is Australia's first community station and provides a real radio alternative for people curious about new ideas, issues, sounds, music and culture.

Deborah's presentation is based around the ideas in her paper The 21st Century Audio Station; presented with Radio Adelaide colleagues Nicky Page and Tony Ryan to the 2003 Educause in Australasia conference in May. The paper urges educators to think again about radio. What might present initially as an 'old' technology, is today a thriving intersection of technology and education, utilising all the newer capacity on on-line technologies whilst retaining the communicative power, low cost, accessibility and user friendliness that has enabled radio to survive and remain the most popular of all media.

The 2003 Educause keynote presentation from David Sice about the innovative Digital Delivery Network now operating in the community radio sector is also useful reading for this session.

About the Presenters

Deborah Welch

Deb fell into radio in Melbourne and spent the second half of the eighties trying a bit of everything at radio stations 3CR and 3RRR, freelancing in audio and program production and training and
lecturing in radio at Swinburne University. She set up community radio's long running women's news program Women on the Line in 1986 and held what was then a unique position in community radio - co-ordinating greater involvement of women in radio at Melbourne station 3CR.

Radio Adelaide. Between 1992 and 1994 she produced features and documentaries including the international award winner Ear to the Ground. Almost simultaneously it seemed she produced a small boy called Gabriel and everything has been simultaneous since then. Deb became Radio Adelaide's training co-ordinator in 1994 and managed the station's development of accredited training - a pioneering role in community radio. Deb (and family) spent 1998 in Townsville, managing indigenous station Radio 4K1G, before returning to Adelaide to become first Acting Program Manager and then Manager in 1999.

From 1998 she has been on the General Grants and Online Grants Advisory Committees of the Community Broadcasting Foundation, and from 2000 onward, a Board Member of the Community Broadcasting Foundation.