A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n
The Future of Networking Technologies for Learning
Assumptions
First, let's speculate about the infrastructure that will be available to support educational applications. We start by looking not at the networks themselves, but at the computers that students will have, for the whole point of digital networks is to interconnect computers. Next we imagine how networking resources will be made available to these computers. Handheld Computers
Networking and computers are intertwined in so many ways, it is difficult and pointless to separate out the specific contribution of networking. A prime example of this intertwining is the way in which ubiquitous networking may finally help small handheld computers [1]
come into their own. 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. The handheld need only be large enough to run a browser (which, granted, will be large).
It is important to understand the difference between today's reality, where students occasionally use a computer in school, often as part of a group, and the future, where they will always have their personal handheld computer available. Few students today have sufficient exposure to computers to become fluid with them, to begin to use them to enhance personal expression and understanding. For most students, the term "personal computer" is a misnomer; students use "institutional computers." Each class involves a different computer, so there is nowhere to store their work. In fact, for the casual student user, the computer, instead of facilitating thought, can have the opposite effect; it can inhibit expression and simply become another barrier to understanding. When a student stops having to think about the cursor, understands what the computer can do, and has mastered a few productivity packages, when everything the student has ever collected, written, drawn, or composed is easily available, then the computer ceases being a problem and starts being part of the solution.
Handhelds cost only a few hundred dollars now and will drop quickly as a mass market develops for models with Internet-browsing capacity. When this happens, each student can finally have a personal computer, one that can go anywhere and do almost anything. This, in turn, will begin to make it possible to realize the major changes in education that have been promised by computer advocates for so long. Educators will be able to utilize information technologies in ways that are difficult to imagine in today's computer-starved classrooms. 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. What is now available will bear the same relation to the handhelds of the end of the decade that the Apple II does to the latest Mac. CPU power will increase by a factor of 100, as will networking bandwidth and memory capacity. Wireless networking will be common, so students will have the full resources of the world at any place. And because they are small and mass-produced, handhelds will be less expensive than desktop computers. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that the most common educational computers in 10 years will be small, networked, handheld computers.
Pipes, Servers, and Clients
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.[2] 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.
Applications
Because of applets [3] and improvements in client software, networking will evolve to become highly interactive and responsive. This will give learners easy access to inquiry tools such as spreadsheets, graphers, symbolic processors, and all kinds of simulations. Interfaces with microcomputer-based labs will be available for networked handheld computers, allowing students to study a wide range of phenomena outside the lab in classrooms, corridors, playgrounds, athletic fields, streets, homes, streams, fields, and forests. Scaffolding applications will help beginning students organize their inquiries and reflect on their learning.
Payment
The information highway is now, first and foremost, an advertising medium crowded with billboards, where th% pitches vary from the hard sell of auto dealers to the soft sell of people and institutions vying to become known by being helpful. Soon, there will be billboard-free toll roads, and many of these will have educational value. They will be important to education because most useful education resources take people time to create, operate, maintain, and update, and involve intellectual property that often requires income reward. Some of this time and property will be provided free by public-spirited volunteers, foundations, and companies. But donated resources will always be a small and unstable fringe effort, rarely able to scale up to have a significant impact on education. All the large-scale, network-based educational programs will be on a fee-for-service basis.
Most good education involves irreducible human costs. Students may be able to communicate with scientists, but not many, so this form of education will not be significant on a national scale. And discussion groups need moderators. In essence, a teacher or similarly knowledgeable person must be available to interact with students and assess their understanding, and that person needs to be compensated. As a result, most resources that can be scaled to reach large numbers of students will cost money that eventually will have to be paid directly by the end user or their schools. Network resources, because they involve bits and not atoms, will be less expensive than their physical counterparts; in effect, textbook funding will be transferred to network resources.
Notes
[1]What shall we call these small computers? The term Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs, has become popular, but is inappropriate; it implies that these are not really computers, but something else that just helps you. This is already not true; the HP 200, for instance, is a full computer that runs Windows. I will use the less-glamorous but more descriptive "handheld computers", or simply "handhelds". [Return]
[2] Many people assume that the asynchronous nature of most of the Internet is a temporary aberation that will be fixed with higher bandwidth. On the contrary, we have stumbled onto something that is usually more valuable, asynchronous communication. While not as rich as symultaneous communication, it is so much more convenient that it will dominate in the future. [Return]
[3] An applet is a small application written in Java that can be downloaded over the Internet and run by a browser, regardless of the computer running the browser. [Return]
Index
Extensions of Traditional Functions