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
Extensions of Traditional Functions
So, given that computers and networks will be intertwined and could be in wide use by students and teachers, let us examine what kinds of resources they will offer educators and how these resources might impact science education. Most of these resources will be similar to those that exist today, only available on the network. The Cybrary
Right now, the greatest benefits of networks are all the new archival materials they offer to educators: references, articles, curricula, books, and catalogs. These resources will continue to grow as the network increasingly is seen as an ideal publishing medium for references, instructional materials, and thin-market material.
The amount of information on the networks is growing at a staggering rate. A sampling of resources of potential interest to math and science students are the following:
- Weather and climate information. Current weather images, predictions, and data are available from many sites. Students not only can get current weather, they can view data about el Nino and ozone.
- Science news. Regular articles and press releases about advances in various fields of science are available as events happen. For example, the images of the Schumaker-Levi collision with Jupiter were accessed by over 4 million users.
- Mandelbrot set viewer. Students can view the Mandelbrot and Julia sets at several orders, from any location, and from any magnification. This is different from other references because an infinite number of computed pictures can be generated.
- Databases. Students can find where the local Superfund sites are, download historical smog levels at their location, explore the production of methane by country, study census data, and examine raw data from the top quark experiment at FermiLab.
The numbers and variety of these kinds of resources are certain to explode. The Library of Congress will be online, as will all scientific and natural resources and geopolitical data. All noncopyrighted books will be free, and most copyrighted books will have small use charges, many of which will be waived for students.
Hot Lesson Plans
Online lesson plans will become an important way for teachers to share ideas for using the network. Already some plans are online, but few have links to other network resources. As teachers gain familiarity with network resources, they will increasingly describe how they weave multiple resources together with more traditional resources t/ address specific learning objectives. These descriptions, or "hot lesson plans," will be available on the network and contain hot links to other network resources used in the lesson. They will be of great interest to others and will pass around the network like wildfire. The best will have a small royalty fee that offers authors the opportunity of an impressive reward based on the number of potential users.
Current events with scientific implications, such as natural disasters, earthquakes, space shots, major discoveries, and astronomical events, will generate particular interest when quickly incorporated into hot lesson plans.
Telecollaboration
Collaborative inquiry will take many forms, from scientist-led efforts like GLOBE, to student-led research such as the Global Lab. Collaboration will start in the classroom with students attacking different parts of a problem and sharing their results over the network. This will grow to include worldwide collaboration within communities of student-researchers of great richness and variety. Shared instrumentation available only through networks--remote telescopes, cameras on satellites, seismometers in schools, automated weather stations, tunneling microscopes--will greatly enrich the range of collaborations in which students can participate.
Netcourses for Teacher Professional Development
There will be an explosion of network-based courses for teacher professional development. The best of these will offer world-class learning opportunities that will intermix cognitive research, educational philosophy, subject mattercontent, and just-in-time support for in-class experimentation. Participantscan work with local study groups and larger virtual groups that span theworld. The faculty leading these will consist of teams that include international experts, experienced teachers, and outstanding researchers. Graduate creditfrom leading institutions throughout the world will be available for teachers.Teacher evaluation in these programs will be based in part on curriculum and research contributions that participating teachers make and post on the network. The result will be a growing teacher-generated literature of immense value to education, and increasing appreciation of the importance of lifelong learning for teachers and teacher-researchers who are making contributions to education, science, and mathematics.
The availability of excellent graduate netcourses will substantially improve teacher preparation and professional development. With thousands of accredited courses available online, no teacher or prospective teacher will ever again have to suffer through a dull, meaningless course just because it is the only one available. That stuffy, old, sexist fogy droning on from outdated notes will have no audience. In fact, entire departments and schools of education will find themselves out of business unless they improve their teaching and scholarship, because their students will be recruited to stronger, more aggressive graduate schools throughout the world.
A note of caution here. There will be lots of junk graduate netcourses and net diploma mills. The network will make it easier to get credit from impressive-sounding institutions for little learning and less effort. Teachers will undertake the extra effort to master difficult courses only when excellence in scholarship, knowledge, and breadth of learning are more highly valued by schools, communities, and unions.
Netcourses and Net Schools for Students
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. Guides will be available online who will interview students and recommend particular netcourses. Evaluations of the netcourses and even of the guides will also be available. The availability of netcourses will provide much-needed choice at the upper end of the educational spectrum, but will represent a major challenge to the core educational mission of schools.
A large number of net schools--schools purporting to offer an entire curriculum--will also be created. Some of these will have curricula consisting of other network resources supplemented by professional guidance and solid evaluation. Many will be terrible, but some will be excellent, offering far better learning experiences than some local schools. The best will not be cheap, because there are irreducible human costs associated with education--essentially the cost of paying someone who understands the current intellectual level of each student across all disciplines and can prescribe experiences appropriate for each. Compared with comparable schools, quality net schools will be less expensive; they will have reduced physical plant costs, fewer administrative costs, and lower faculty costs because they use a mix of advanced students, volunteers, and low-cost international expertise.
Evaluation
The network offers many ways to support improved student evaluation. Student portfolios can be put online and subjected to peer and external professional review. The network offers many new opportunities to automate and track reliability, increasing the pool of potential evaluators and the consistency of their judgments. It is likely that network-based, for-fee evaluation services will spring up that will have the confidence of colleges and universities and also will offer a far more thoughtful and intelligent way of evaluating student work than the current over-reliance on "objective" tests. This development will have a major impact on teaching throughout the precollege level, relaxing the need to have a nodding acquaintance with many topics and rewarding thoughtful engagement with a few.
There will also be valuable network-based tracking and database capacities that will support evaluation. Imagine, for instance, that a learner wishes to have her experiences in one corner of the Web automatically recorded for inclusion in her portfolio. An automatic tracking utility might be able to note what kinds of information the student was exposed to, sample some interactions, and record exemplary work at the student's request. The resulting record, itself a hyperlinked network resource, would be invaluable to students, teachers, and parents.
Index
New Functions
Assumptions