Long ago we science fiction writers foresaw strange new communities
linking minds across the world: John Wyndham's Re-Birth and Olaf
Stapledon's Odd John are examples. But none of us imagined the impact of
such communities on education. Let me try to make up for that with a
brief science fiction vignette. You're holding a plastic box about the
size and thickness of a loose-leaf binder. Half of the face of the box
is a screen. Below it are a keyboard, a microphone, and an earphone
jack. The whole gadget looks like an outsize Game Boy.
You're studying Canadian history, and the binder-sized computer is your
teacher/librarian. The year is 2005--maybe sooner. The screen shows a
photograph of Louis Riel. It's a familiar photo, but now it's a
colorized, digitized, animated 3-D image. Riel doesn't look "historical"
anymore; he looks alive. Now Riel is standing in the dock at his trial,
facing a crowded courtroom. In stereo you hear the murmur of the
audience, the distant bark of a dog. You hear Riel speak, see him
gesture. Meanwhile the text of his speech appears as subtitles. Along
the edge of the screen are small "button" images. You touch one and the
speech stops. You press another one, titled "Details," and then touch
the images of the other people in the picture; their names appear beside
them. Touching a name fills the screen with a brief biography of the
person.
You return to the speech. When it's over, you press a button titled
"Comment." A bibliography of historical research scrolls up the screen.
You can read each article or skim to another one. You find the name
"Gabriel Dumont" in one of the articles; putting your finger on the name
causes his portrait to appear on the screen. The multimedia essay you
write about Riel and Dumont will include "buttons," thus referring
readers to your sources.
Advances in graphics, audio, and computer memory will soon turn such
science fiction into everyday reality. Through such computerized
teaching, students will be able to understand their subjects better than
ever before. Going in any direction they like, they'll learn what most
concerns them. In a subject like history, they'll see vivid re-creations
of events.
But such teaching will have its hazards as well. Conditioned by TV,
computer learners may expect a certain number of "jolts per minute."
Louis Riel's speech, for example, might become a voice-over for an
animation of the Battle of Batoche--again, with color, 3-D, and very
realistic bloodshed. After that, the student might forget all about the
issues of the North West Rebellion and go looking for more gory images.
Computer graphics could provide even more jolts. They can already give
us virtual reality. Using goggles with video monitors for lenses, we can
step into an electronic hallucination created inside a computer. So you
could seem to be standing on the cliffs at Batoche, and by walking
around you could watch the battle while listening to Riel's speech.
But what seems most real can be utterly false. Because such computerized
"texts" will be so powerful, their accuracy and emphasis will be
politically sensitive. (A virtual-reality account of, say, the Plains of
Abraham or the 1970 October Crisis could cause severe repercussions in
modern Canada.) So adopting such materials could trigger sharp protests
and complaints of brainwashing.
The notebook-sized computer I've described is independent; it contains
its own data, on a huge scale, but doesn't connect to others. When it
does--and it will--it will form a network that will knock down the walls
of every classroom in the world. Just as computer networks have made
corporate middle management obsolete, they are changing the organization
of school as well.
Anecdotal evidence: On my home computer one autumn Sunday, I picked up a
couple of projects that students had E-mailed to me. I also posted a
notice to my Applied Information Technology students at Capilano College
about their next assignment. By Monday morning, before coming to school,
they'd all read it.
I also spent some time electronically visiting Virtual High, a Vancouver
private school whose students work mostly at home. But they can hook up
to their school's computer network to exchange information (sometimes at
2:30 in the morning).
These are perfectly typical experiences in education for growing numbers
of people. George Gilder, an American writer on technology, has pointed
out that computers are linking up into networks at a dramatic rate. The
more they do so, the more efficient and valuable they become. Gilder
notes that since the 1970s, the number of transistors on a silicon chip
has doubled about every eighteen months. Today's most advanced chips
have around 20,000 transistors; by 2003, the doubling rate will mean a
billion-transistor chip. In effect, says Gilder, the computing power of
16 Cray supercomputers (total 1993 cost: $320 million) will be available
in 2003 on one chip for under $100.
What's more, millions of personal computers using such chips will be in
use. Each computer will contain both astounding amounts of information
and powerful means of shaping that information. And each computer will
hook up to millions of others. Your computer will search the network for
whatever information it knows you want--old movies, a news summary, a
good novel, or statistical data on the number of people who no longer
commute to work.
Among those ex-commuters will be teachers, students, and school-building
construction workers. Face-to-face contacts will still happen, and one
of teachers' most important jobs will be to help students avoid the
electronic garbage that will clutter the networks. But most education
will be independent, self-paced home learning. After all, why bother
going to a school when you have all the resources of the world's great
libraries (and some really good teachers) available right at home?
The students at Virtual High come to their school building more often
than they need to because like most teenagers, they enjoy socializing.
But they can do just as much at home, learning at their chosen speed and
at ungodly hours if they like. Within a few years, their present laptop
computers and communications software will look quaintly primitive. But
such students are the forerunners of a revolution that will overwhelm
ordinary chalk-and-talk schools.
And eighteen months after the billion-transistor chip is available in
2003, another one twice as powerful and half as expensive will hit the
market.
No doubt this will all happen, but it won't turn education into a sunny
summer weekend in utopia. Computers and telecommunications offer some
solutions to present education problems, but they raise new problems as
well. Operating from home, some students go online with little desire or
incentive to study systematically. They may use telecommunications just
to gossip or to download software--not to advance their education.
Computers will eventually take over much of the repetitive work of
teaching. But online students will still need plenty of direct contact
with live teachers for guidance, advice, and encouragement. Those
teachers won't suddenly be able to handle more than a normal student
load; in fact they may need a much smaller one.
Many students start exploring the Internet only to find much of it is a
toxic-waste dump. For some users, it's just a convenient source of
pornographic pictures and text. People with similar interests form
Internet "newsgroups" to discuss them. Not all are healthy. Some push
neo-Nazi propaganda. Unsavory cranks and bigots dominate other
newsgroups.
Good educational material does exist on the Internet, but it's often
hard to find and harder to use. Many Internet-linked computers provide
mostly junk, in the form of dumb games, useless shareware, and
irrelevant databases.
The culture of the Internet isn't always welcoming to young people.
Electronic mail and discussions in the newsgroups are sometimes worse
than rude. "Flame wars" break out, with combatants using language
ranging from the crude to the libelous. An innocent question or comment
may trigger an avalanche of abuse.
Women using the Internet often find themselves pestered and harassed by
electronic lechers. The only way for women to escape unwanted attention
is to use initials instead of a first name. Even more alarming, some
adults go online to seek out children. The purpose is to dump obscene or
abusive remarks on the kids' monitors. Schools with their own private
bulletin board system can keep out such unwelcome intruders, but it's a
different story out on the Internet itself.
We have one big encouragement: Used properly, computers in education
promote empathy and understanding. If you can't put yourself in your
reader's shoes, the computer is a terrible way to communicate. Children
already understand that, and the rest of us are learning the lesson
too.
Crawford Kilian, Coordinator of Communications at Capilano College in
North Vancouver, British Columbia, is a weekly columnist for the
Vancouver Province newspaper and the author of ten science fiction and
fantasy novels. ckilian@cin.etc.bc.ca