A Force of Change
By Judith M. Brooks

 

No the sky is not falling, and you won't fall off of the edge of the world, but as with most ages of discovery, there becomes an urgency to find out just where you fit in to the grand scheme of things. The common questions arise, "Who am I?" and "Where am I going?"

The age of information is no different. We are all out here trying to find out if we are going to fall off or if our sky is going to cave in. Many of us were brought up in a home where our mothers mothered and our fathers went to work. Girls were reared for marriage and the eventual motherhood; and boys were reared for hard work. The white picket fence was vital in many of our minds; and thus it shall stay.

Today's children are raised in daycare facilities and preschools with extended day programs. Mothers and fathers alike participate in the workforce. Today's child is shaped by the world outside of the home; and that world is everchanging. Today's child is influenced by technology before he or she is even born with advanced medical technologies; many are the result of that technology. Is today's child influenced by and shaped by technology? The answer is a resounding...YES.

A pre-req for the childcare facility we choose is the child's accessability to a computer, among other things. The toys we buy for our children...Nintendo games, Playstation, Gigapets, computer games and educational technologies. Why even the shoes on their feet have a touch of technology in them, with their flashing red lights and such. Today's child is in fact technology driven.

While we were 3, 4 and 5 years old at home trying to figure out what to do next, draw a picture, color in our coloring books, or go out and play hide-n-go-seek, today's child has mastered the ability to navigate through the World Wide Web. He or she knows the alphabet and can even type it out on the computer. He or she knows how to read and accomplish many complex and rewarding tasks in learning software, like for example, "Reader Rabbit". Sure, some have progressed further than others, but the remedy is simple...just sit them in front of a computer and load some educational software and watch those little fingers and intricate minds do their thing.

"Cognitive research has confirmed a commonsensical conclusion: students learn best when they are engaged with what they are studying, when they are making decisions, when they are thinking critically." The Nintendo Generation.

As educators do we know who our market is? Sure we do. Do we know how technology has impacted their lives, including the way in which they learn? We can sense it. Do we know how to prepare for it, grow with and become an intregral part or even a driving force of it? Well, maybe or maybe not. In any case, technology is an intregral part of the learning process of our clients -- the student -- and that student profile is extremely diversified.

"Today’s undergraduate student body is no longer dominated by eighteen- to twenty-two-year-old high school graduates from affluent backgrounds. It is composed also of increasing numbers of adults from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, already in the workplace, perhaps with families, seeking the education and skills necessary for their careers." -- James J. Duderstadt, President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering, University of Michigan/Ann Arbor.

As educators, is it not our responsibility to create an enriched learning system that our children can thrive in? How do we take the traditional educational environment and evolve it into something recognizable for today's children.

Will the university as we know it truly become a relic, like the pillars of Greece. A beauty to be looked back on, but never to be recreated. What do we take along

that truly does work, and what do we leave behind? How will this technology change the way we learn... the way we teach? (possible visual -- CMU building aged into a ruins)

"Technology is a key transforming element in creating this new model of school. Just as technology is reshaping other institutions, it has the potential to reshape education, ending the disjunction between school and the broader society." Nintendo Generation.

Only those who truly do educate will discover the answers. Those who by nature explore the world around them, much like our children do, will be able to have a resounding positive impact on the educational systems of tomorrow. There are so many possibilities. Either we embrace the technology or we cease to exist.

Peter Drucker states in Forbes magazine, "Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics... It's as large a change as when we first got the printed book... Already we are beginning to deliver more lectures and classes off-campus via satellite or two-way video at a fraction of the cost." (as quoted in Training & Development magazine)

There are many philosophical thoughts on the nature of the information age and the impact of technology... "The nature of knowledge creation is moving from the analysis of what has been, to the creation of what has never been." (source?) But what are we really trying to do? In simple terms, we are still trying to educate. The major difference being the tools we use to do that.

Are we trying to create knowledge or are we building knowledge? Knowledge On Line (KOL) is a system that Booz-Allen & Hamilton have created. The most commonly used aspect of which is a knowledge repository, in which the firm's knowledge and expertise are captured, classified, and quantified. Their philosophy: 'don't reinvent -- take what you've got to a higher level.'"

Isn't that in fact what is happening here. The transition and challenge for educators involves taking what they already know and do, and packaging it and delivering it differently. And the way and style in which that can happen is vast, as vast as the technologies available.

We shift from the blackboard and chalk, to the electronic whiteboard and your finger; from the transparency overheads, to the same printed out on paper for a computer-operated camera to collect and send the signal via internet; from the classroom in a building, to a classroom that you design for students to enter wherever they are.

While the technologies take a while to digest, another challenge is presented. One that affects the way in which you view yourself, the way in which you view your student. "The fluidity of information is such that it no longer filters from top down; it branches out into every imaginable direction, and it flows away from the information creators toward the information users." Training & Development magazine. "This is an incredible opportunity for a kind of critical mass thinking that will cross all borders." (possible visual -- tree overhanging a river or stream; knowledge dropping off and into the stream to be carried away)

"This shift from teacher as an all-knowing disseminator of knowledge to a participant in the learning process makes students more responsible for their own learning. Consequently, They will learn how to learn - which is what will be truly necessary in the next millennium. Students who know how to learn will be those who are adaptive and thus always employable." (First Monday, an online publication, Internet in America’s Schools, Potential Catalysts for Policy Makers, author Joseph Slowinski)

"Education must be based on a model that is appropriate for an information-driven society. We must prepare children for a future of unforeseeable and rapid change."

 

 

January 1999

 

 

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