Higher-level skills required for processing information.

Knowledge production is focus of worker.

The learning organization...

...relates to constructivist approach to learning ...which is basic to needs of the knowledge worker.

Virtual communities: students as researchers and knowledge producers.

Student projects resulting in concrete benefits to local school and neighborhood.

Responsibility for one’s learning will become shared.

Teaching/mentoring roles will be shared more widely.

Classroom teacher not required to be the expert.

Learning is a process, teachers and administrators become organization managers.

"Computers" now embedded in numerous devices, including educational ones.

Wide variety of devices are fusing together—into a single box.

Global information structures calls for different preparation of students.

New forms of communication shape the message and the user.

Core skill is now filtering knowledge from vast amounts of information.

Virtual museums: field trips without travel.

Engaged learning experiences via collaborative, linked, real activities.

Virtual experience may provide opportunities for those who have had difficulty in traditional, face-to-face settings.

Virtual communities can foster better community links to schools.

Video game technology may provide base for rich learning materials.

New skills to teach: distanced interaction and info’ gathering.

How the barrage of digital devices is used depends on work of designers, teachers and learners.

Revolution relates to information, not computers.

New software expands power of the web, beyond browsing to customized software.

Bandwidth increases will enhance Internet’s capabilities, such as full-motion conferencing.

Technology for digital collaboration is being developed.

Computer and Internet are not just tools; they represent a new environment for learning.

Educational network differ from commercial; cost and access are main concerns.

Wireless link maintenance costs still high; bandwidth limited.

Schools may want to provide dial-up services to Internet to grow capacity and provide services to community.

Creating web content is within reach of students and teachers—web content can be an educational product.

Open architectures are developing, allowing component pieces of software which work together.

This component design requires more fluid change and purchasing than is common in school systems.

Handhelds + network access = all a student needs.

All students will have handhelds and be able to access their data from anywhere.

Servers, at home and at school, will store all the data we need.

Network-based courses for teachers and students will be prevalent.

Technologies will enhance science education.

Middle school math will be transformed by graphers and symbolic manipulators.

Modeling will be key to science

World’s cultures are being converted to digital form.

Multimedia is a significant development in our culture.

Educators will help to construct a new educational system based on innovations available to them.

"Learner Contributions to Knowledge, Community, and Learning"

Beverly Hunter & John Richards

BBN Educational Technologies

http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/hunter.html

Effective knowledge workers need to develop new higher-level skills for accessing, selecting, manipulating, and representing information in a variety of formats.

We are facing the challenge of large-scale knowledge production. The SCANS report says, "Modern work is just too complex for a small cadre of managers to possess all the answers" (SCANS 1992, p. 16). Workers at every stage or level of a knowledge-based organization must contribute to the production of knowledge.

"A learning organization is an organization in which people at all levels are, collectively, continually enhancing their capacity to create things they really want to create" (Senge, as quoted in O'Neil 1995, p. 20).

If children and teachers are engaged, collaboratively, in actively constructing their own knowledge, then schools are laying a foundation for the intellectual development of the knowledge worker (cf. Goldberg and Richards 1995).

In the Global Lab project organized by TERC, teachers, high school students, and research scientists around the world study local and global ecological change. They use low-cost instruments and sensors such as ozonometers, ion-selective probes for soil and water monitoring, and field data loggers.

Such networked educational projects sometimes have direct and concrete benefits to the local school and neighborhood. One example is the series of air quality studies conducted by Global Lab students in Pease Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, which resulted in improvements to the ventilation system of the school and a new appreciation by parents and administrators of the contributions their young people can make (Berenfeld 1993).

Responsibility for one's learning will be shared by all. The pace of change is too fast for individuals to depend totally on others to structure their learning and information for them; ...new curriculum frameworks, instructional materials, assessment and testing schemes, and teacher training programs will take into account these increased responsibilities for information management and knowledge creation.

Responsibility for teaching and mentoring will be shared more widely than in the past.

Classroom teachers will not be expected to have expertise in all the areas of knowledge their students are encountering.

Learning is seen more as a process. Intelligence is recognized as diversified, and authentic assessment tells us to look at it in context. Teachers and administrators are also learners. In that role they are typical learning organization managers. They are mentors; they guide, provide access to resources, facilitate.

The Evolution of Learning Devices:

Smart Objects, Information Infrastructures, and Shared Synthetic Environments

Chris Dede, Graduate School of Education, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, (703) 993-2019

http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/dede.html

Over the course of the industrial revolution, motors shrank in size and cost, disappearing inside household appliances and workplace tools to create new kinds of machines. Through a similar process, we are now embedding computers and telecommunications into our everyday context, making possible three innovative types of learning devices. Smart objects, with embedded microprocessors and wireless networking, explain their own functioning and help us create "articulate" educational environments that communicate with their inhabitants.

The coming generation of computers and telecommunications is different from prior evolutions of information technology because it is dramatically reversing the century-old trend toward a crowded ecology of devices. Different species are fusing together; the radio, television, telephone, copier, fax, scanner, printer, and computer will eventually coexist in a single box. Soon, the ecology of information technologies will have only a few superspecies remaining that synthesize and extend the capabilities of all current devices.

Global information infrastructures ... are ... extending our nervous systems so that we can communicate and learn across barriers of distance and time, exploring and contributing to virtual think tanks (Dede 1994). As a result, the means for creating, delivering, and using information in business, government, and society are swiftly changing. To successfully prepare students as workers and citizens, educators must incorporate experiences into the curriculum that enable students to create and utilize new forms of expression and that can be activated just in time, at any place, and on demand (Dede and Lewis 1995).

The "information superhighway" ... is an inadequate analogy. Backward-looking metaphors focus on what we can automate but miss the true innovation: redefining how we communicate and educate by using new types of messages and experiences to be more effective. Since emerging forms of representation, such as hypermedia and virtual reality, are in their early stages of development, we are just beginning to understand how they shape not only their messages, but also their users.

The core skill needed in today's workplace is not foraging for data, but filtering a plethora of incoming information. The emerging literacy we all must master requires immersing ourselves in a sea of information and harvesting patterns of knowledge, just as fish extract oxygen from water via their gills. In this environment, educators must understand how to structure learning experiences that make this kind of immersion possible. Preparing students for full participation in 21st century society will require expanding the traditional definitions of literacy and rhetoric to encompass "immersionlike" experiences of interacting with information.

Another type of emerging electronic environment is the virtual exhibit that duplicates museums and other real-world settings. Virtual exhibits make possible a wide variety of experiences without the necessity of travel or scheduling.

Teachers must provide unsophisticated learners with educational experiences that enable them to construct their own knowledge and make sense of massive, incomplete, and inconsistent information sources. In order to create a learner-centered environment in which students can take full advantage of information infrastructures, it is vital that educators augment the traditional curriculum with collaborative, learning-through-doing activities based on linked, online materials and orchestrated across classrooms, workplaces, homes, and community settings.

Virtual communities that provide support from people who share common joys and trials are a second means for enhancing student learning through information infrastructures. ...This alternative conception of authenticity may reflect a different kind of learning style than the visual, auditory, symbolic, and kinesthetic distinctions now used.

Virtual communities can help bring about close cooperation and shared responsibility for learning among all the educational agents of society families, social service agencies, workplaces, mass media, schools, and higher education. For example, involving families more deeply in their children's education may be the single most powerful lever for improved learning outcomes.

Since video game consoles are widely found even in poor and rural households, they offer a promising installed base of learning technologies if we develop educationally rich material that takes advantage of these systems.

Educators must help all students become adept at distanced interaction, for skills of gathering information from remote sources and of collaboration with dispersed team members are as central to the future American workplace as learning to perform structured tasks quickly was to the industrial revolution. Also, by increasing the diversity of human resources available to students, distributed learning can enhance equity and pluralism, while preparing young people to compete in the world marketplace. Virtual classrooms have a wider spectrum of peers with whom learners can collaborate than any local region can offer and a broader range of teachers and mentors than any single educational institution can afford.

Today's "couch potatoes," vicariously living in the fantasy world of television, could become tomorrow's "couch funguses," immersed as protagonists in 3-D soap operas while the real world deteriorates. The most significant influence on the evolution of education will not be the technical development of more powerful devices, but the professional development of wise designers, teachers, and learners.

Digital Technology and its Impact on Education

Joseph Hardin, John Ziebarth

National Center for Supercomputing Applications

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

605 East Springfield Avenue

Champaign, IL 61820

http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/hardin.html

So what is the difference between the past two decades of computers and Internet access and the present, since even now WWW access requires computers and an Internet connection? The difference is that the Web represents Information, and information cannot be disregarded the way that computers can be ignored. Teachers cannot choose to ignore or have their students omit available information on any subject when the goal is for them to learn. A revolution is taking place in education.

In fact, the idea of a browser needs to give way to the more encompassing idea of a Web environment that is flexible and dynamic and can be customized to the needs of the moment. Java, a new programming language from Sun Microsystems, opens up these possibilities by allowing programs to be sent over the Web in a secure fashion. Programs that are executed locally when they arrive at the user's desktop are an example of "mobile code."

The availability of additional bandwidth through, say, cable TV Internet access, would be of obvious value in enhancing real-time collaborations, especially those involving huge data sets, high speed visualization, and real-time video.

This technology is moving toward fully digital conferencing techniques that go beyond video and encompass a completely rendered, customizable, bandwidth-sensitive, 3-D representation of each participant, in a fully 3-D environment for the conference and any accompanying data or simulation results.

Some of the current tools include a Web-based group calendar, chatting capability, capability for threaded discussion and group meetings, writing tools, document storage and publication tools, a project management tool, a forms tool, workspace management tools, and more. New asynchronous tools are currently under development, and the synchronous tools being developed through the Habanero effort will become features of this workplace very soon.

An obstacle that needs to be overcome is the view many hold that computers and Internet connectivity are "tools" for learning, and thus an increased grade point average is the only measure of value for these resources. A more important perspective is for administrators and school boards to realize that the Web represents a new environment for learning and teaching and that very soon every teacher and student will need access to the information represented on the Web in order to be competitive in their work and in their lives.

"Building the Information Driveway: How To Make School Networking Universally Available"

Robert D. Carlitz, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

Eugene F. Hastings II, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, 4400 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213

http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/carlitz.html

Commercial networks emphasize privacy and security issues over cost and access considerations. For educational and community networks, cost and access are the primary concerns, and network architectures that neglect these factors are unlikely to be sustainable for very long.

But one must bear in mind that maintenance costs for wireless links are likely to be higher than those for fixed wiring and that the bandwidth available for wireless communications is extremely limited compared to the bandwidth of fixed copper or fiber infrastructure.

Local aggregation of traffic. School districts can aggregate traffic and purchase bulk connectivity to pass this traffic to the Internet cloud. Municipal governments can play a similar role for community centers and government offices. These groups assume a portion of the responsibility for network management and thereby reduce costs for the end users.

Advances are also being made in the area of Web editors, which simplify the task of creating resources to be placed online via the World Wide Web. These advances are reducing the costs of training students and teachers to create multimedia presentations for online distribution and increasing their ability to develop these resources as part of their standard classroom activities.

Connecting the Connectivity and the Component Revolutions to Deep Curriculum Reform

James J. Kaput, Department of Mathematics, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth

Jeremy Roschelle, University of California, Berkeley

http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/kaput.html

Rapidly emerging industry systems and standards, such as OpenDoc and OLE, solve many of the technical problems described above. The basic idea is as follows. Large, stand-alone software systems will give way to relatively small, interoperable components that can be produced independently of one another, include their data in common file structures (such as a single notebook of the type described in the scenario), and share screen space and control.

Many more producers can participate in the market at a component level, and schools can purchase and assemble what they need from a wide variety of components, upgrading piecewise as needed over time. This fits the fluidity and adaptability depicted in the scenario, which contrasts starkly with the slow change of most schools and system

http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/tinker.html

The network can reach handhelds through a simple serial wire, infrared, or wireless digital radio and turn them into Internet clients and servers. With this capacity, a student can hold the entire cyberspace infosphere. There is no need to possess hard drives for on-board personal files, no need to squeeze in an encyclopedia or huge databases, no need to have computational muscle; these capacities can exist at a remote server.

Soon there will be schools where all students have their own networked computer that they can use year in and year out, at home, in school, on the bus, on vacation, and in the family car. For these students, education, especially science education, can be much richer and more interesting and meaningful. Networking will soon make these new uses possible with affordable handhelds, rendering these computers far more useful than they would be without connectivity.

Over the next decade, handheld computers will change a great deal, so it is unreasonable to use the current models as a guide.

Wide bandwidth digital networks--pipes--will reach into every home and school in a decade, whether the data is moved over the power line, cable, telephone, satellite dish, fiber, or dedicated digital line. In homes, these pipes will terminate in a server computer that might called a set-top box because a TV will be connected to it. But the server will do much more than simply provide a TV signal; it will also provide network access to all the computers in the home, including the kids' handheld computers, using wireless, infrared, and wires. Schools will also have ubiquitous networking, so that no student will need to carry files in a handheld computer, but can have full access at home and in school. Synchronous and asynchronous communication among students locally and worldwide--using combinations of speech, text, drawings, and pictures--will be commonplace. Two-way video will be expensive and less used outside business, because of the demands it makes on bandwidth and simultaneity. The most common piece of software will be client network tools descended from today's browsers, that integrate access, authoring, and application control. The huge market for these tools will ensure interoperability between platforms and networks, creating a network as seamless and transparent as the current telephone network.

A profusion of netcourses will be available to students, ranging from little more than organized tours of network resources to sophisticated courses offered by scientific and educational experts. Some will be free, while others will charge tuition.

Information technologies will support a full integration of experimental science with mathematics in beginning student projects and investigations. Starting at 6 years old, kids will be designing and carrying out their own technology-rich investigations, gaining experience with materials, design techniques, measurement, error analysis, and interpretation.

Because of the skills and knowledge covered by the elementary curriculum, mathematics at the middle levels (starting with kids 13 to 15 years old) will be freed from much of the beginning algebra abstractions and instead will concentrate on numerical modeling, estimation and, later, the use of algebraic formalism, particularly with the help of graphers and symbolic manipulators.

The concentration on modeling, particularly dynamic modeling, will provide a key underpinning for a range of scientific theorizing, since dynamic models with feedback help students predict the future of everything from astronomy to the stock market, from global warming to school demographics.

"Renewing the Progressive Contract with Posterity: On the Social Construction of Digital Learning Communities"

Robert McClintock, Institute for Learning Technologies, Teachers College, Columbia University

http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/robbie.html

First, people are converting all the contents of all the world's cultures to digital form, making the results available to any person at any place at any time. Second, people are gaining flexible command of multiple ways to represent information, simulate interactions, and express ideas, extending the reach of intelligence, altering the spectrum of civilized achievement, and lowering thresholds to cultural participation. Third, people are externalizing diverse basic skills--to calculate, spell, remember, visualize, compare, select--into the digital tools with which they work, making practical mastery of such skills, once an outcome of education, increasingly a given at its outset. As these changes become evident in practice all around, educators sense that the spectrum of pedagogical possibility alters significantly.

New media alter the ways of knowing and the opportunities for participating in the creation of knowledge. Multimedia, and its extension in virtual reality, is not merely a glitzy vehicle for edutainment hype. It is an epistemologically interesting development in our culture.

In deciding what to do with changing conditions, educators will engage in the social construction of a new educational system, one that will come about through diverse innovations undertaken here and there by people and groups that share, to varying degrees, a common understanding of what potentialities arise in their world of practice with the new technologies.

We can do better in our extended present by recognizing that the task facing educators is to reconstruct the whole system in ways that will allow it to use new communications resources to overcome the inherent, structural deficiencies of the current system.

People, acting in the face of uncertainty, must determine what they can make of these emerging possibilities. Many groups and interests, pursuing many divergent inspirations, are vying for command, and a kaleidoscope of coalitions establishes, through diverse initiatives, emerging norms of practice.