Thus far, "e-education" actually has been "remote education" or "residential education".
It is as follows :
Such an e-education system as instructor-as-user is assumed novice at IT is produced. And it is used at schools.
The system is of two types :
One which yields a remote education by means of live video
One which yields a web-based virtual school
The standpoint held in the case of the "web-based virtual school" is :
Any instructor can participate with little trouble.
Teaching material (web contents) is made alike (regarding style and quality).
And it becomes a way that instructors submit (upload to the server) their teaching material by following a given form.
It follows that teaching contents is mostly text. That is, to make teaching contents is just to write.
There is another type of interest in "web as teaching/learning media". It is the one from the standpoint of "information design". Here the idea of "information design over multimedia" leads to the idea of "web-page as platform of rich contents".
I, myself, have been practicing "design of multimedia teaching material" (since the end of 1980s) and "web-based instruction" (since 1995), from the standpoint of "improving mathematics education by raising the quality of teaching/learning material".
While the meaning of e-education from the standpoint of remote education is the broad distribution of education as cutback in cost/labor, the one from the standpoint of "information design" is the improvement of education in the sense of "improvement of content". While the former concerns quantity, the latter concerns quality. And the interest of teachers in general is in the improvement of content.
For the "information design" side, "e-education" has been an impractical subject until recently. That is, e-education has just started now.
The "information design"-oriented e-education has been out of personal capacity in respect to cost, environment, technological requisite and so on. I, as one of those who have been studying and practicing it precedingly, have met many kinds of difficulties in organizing courses and making students work.
Recently, the hard- and softwares which are proverbial for digital contents making have become to meet personal use in respect to the price. (In order to be a digital contents maker, s/he must own a set of hard- and softwares - a teacher, much more.)
As to storage media, the large capacity together with the lowprice has been realized.
And, most importantly, the number of citizens who are in such communication circumstances (multimedia PC, broadband network, etc.) as afford e-education.
The appoach to "e-education" from "information design" becomes quite defferent from the one from "broad distribution".
For example, in the case of "broad distribution", it is expected that a well-designed online system make possible for traditional teachers to enter the e-education. And therefore, "mass production of e-educators" becomes the policy of system design.
On the other hand, in the case of "information design", the policy is : to support educators to bring her/his originality into full play. It is irreconcilable with "mass production of e-educators".
After all, in the practice of "information desing"-oriented e-education, educators are obliged to be independent. Importation of "division of labor" will just result in complications. Educators are to design a system, to make contents, and so on, independently, to greater or lesser degrees. Thus, "versatility" is a condition for being an e-educator.
"Versatility", however, is just a present expression which is meaningful as far as the present/traditional educators are concerned. In the near future, this "versatility" becomes a common trait of educators. In competitive circumstances about career making, s/he will become obliged to be "versatile". And programs for e-educator training will be imported in various types of school.