A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Conclusion

66: If the agenda sketched in the pages above approximates the historic task of social construction required in building a new educational system enabled by digital technologies, then we see that we are, at most, at the beginning of this effort that spans our extended present. The technological part is the easy part. The work of educational innovation stretches before us with demanding challenges.

• Renew the progressive contract with posterity by using new tools to pursue historically challenging goals--fulfilling basic human rights; securing the physical well-being of all in a sustainable global environment; eliminating prejudice, poverty, despair, and disease.
• Shift the central concern in cultural and education policy from limited access to open participation, displacing the long-standing politics of exclusion with a vibrant, many-sided politics of inclusion.
• Affirm the importance of independent inquiry and study as the engine of education, de-emphasizing the traditional dominance of instruction.
• Redesign the relation between K-12 education and higher education w-th an integrated intellectual environment active at all levels, engaging all as creative participants in the cultural enterprise.
• Develop a demonstration that new educational possibilities can address the intractable problems of the old system on a scale sufficient to change public expectations.
• Create digital learning communities as the new milieu of practice where people meet face-to-face and via videoconference, with people of mixed ages and interests engaged together in the effort of learning, supported by each other, by complete digital libraries, by open wide-area networks, and by powerful tools of analysis, synthesis, and simulation.

When such tasks are complete, then the work of social construction will have run its course. Much is to be done.

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Last modified May 1, 1996 (gls).