The growing integration of the Information and Communication Technologies with communication and educational processes requires new forms of organizing and transmitting knowledge. With this in mind, the present article examines distance education (educação a distância - EaD) pointing to the risks involved in mistaking technical innovation for pedagogical innovation; and it also gives emphasis to the importance of transferring the focus of the debate on EaD from 'modality' to 'method', and from teaching organization to forms of teaching and of learning. For this purpose, we must consider the two dimensions of technique - as an object of study and as a pedagogical tool - and also the interdisciplinary character of education. The approach we present here is set over against the technicist conception of teaching. It removes technology from the centre of the educational process and emphasizes the latter's historical and social dimension. In our view, more than being a way to fill the gaps in the educational system, EaD tends to become a regular element in the current teaching systems and, if it is carried out with a open teaching perspective and integrated with conventional teaching, it can help to make the access to education more democratic.
distance education; media-education; Technologies of Information and Communication