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		Living Down Under - Outback & Co Page 3 / 11
		School, mail, shopping, police - everyday problems
		Imagine you live in the middle of the outback: your mailbox is 15 kilometers down the track, your "next-door" neighbour lives 40 kilometers from your house and it´s a thousand kilometers to the beach. What are you to do, now you just realized that somebody killed one of your cows, that your fridge is almost empty, that it is your rich aunt´s birthday tomorrow and that your son´s holiday will end next Monday??? This (slightly exaggerated) situation however serves to show some of the everyday problems people in the outback have to cope with:       School in Australia is compulsory until the age of 15/16, even if you live in "the never never country". Fortunately, Miss Adelaide Miethke of Alice Springs founded the "School of the Air", where pupils are taught via transceiver (radio). The schools provide correspondence courses, assessment of student development, daily communication (with two-way radio, phone, fax and computer links to provide problem solving for parents and pupils) and teacher visits to students at home. The "S.O.T.A." in Alice Springs broadcasts from Central Australia. It provides information for students in the NT, South Australia and Western Australia. Today, the School of the Air reaches hundreds of children spread over more than half the continent, covering an area of about 300,000 km2. (Click the 28K map for further info on the "biggest classroom of the world".)
		Christoph Hage@ruhr-uni-bochum.de Last update: 26/03/02.