- Preface
- I. A new era
- • Globalization, the first sign of change
- • English - the new planetary language
- • A change in the scale of education
- II. Education and its context
- • Education and business
- • Education and the state
- III. The digital habit
- • The new digital culture
- • Digital projects
- • Time for assimilation
- IV. The extended school
- • Education at a critical moment
- • A definition of the extended school
- • Yesterday: concentrated knowledge
- • Today: knowledge disseminated
- • Tomorrow: knowledge connected
- V. New tools and old
- • Chalk and blackboard
- • The spinning globe
- • Microscopic life
- • Desk and work
- • The computer garden
- • Slides and liquid Crystal
- • Projectors and projections
- • Dry and digital copies
- VI. Digital transition
- • Continuing education
- • Cultural exchange
- • The mental switch
- • Critical thought
- • Internal communication
- • Educational frontier posts
- • Technological updating
- • Creativity and deregulation
- VII. Means and ends
- • Values for today and for always
- • Technocentrality and consumerism
- • Software in the public domain
- VIII. The digital library
- • Atoms versus bits
- • The dual book
- • Digital quality
- • Reading and writing
- • Text and hypertext
- • Consult and navigate
- IX. The home computer
- • A new piece of furniture or a new instrument?
- • Playthings and electronic toys
- • Robots for assembly
- • The silent printer
- • The community network
- X. New instruments of thought
- • Word processors, a new way of writing
- • A friendly mouse
- • More portable learning
- • Designing with computers
- • The golden link in communications: the modem
- • Electronic mail always arrives at its destination
- • Fax, a threatened species
- • WWW: three magic letters
- • Reliable and accessible data bases
- • Tables, abacus and spreadsheet
- • The Scanner, a bridge between two worlds
- • New interfaces and old keyboards
- • Presentation aids
- • So-called multimedia
- • Digital cameras without film
- • Digital videos in schools
- • Music for all
- XI. Presence and remote presence
- • Features of distance education
- • The three generations
- • Synchronous and asynchronous moments
- • Spaces for meeting
- • Classrooms open to the world
- • The advantages
- • New educational niches
- • A new type of teacher and student
- XII. Talents and handicaps
- • The right to communication
- • The obstacle of the keyboard
- • The obstacle of the screen
- • The expression of individual talent
- Conclusions
X. NEW INSTRUMENTS OF THOUGHT
Fax, a threatened species
The fax will gradually disappear as the use of paper as documentation declines. It is still widely used in the world of business, but in education it is restricted to administrative areas. In the case of smaller children it has the advantage of being used without the need to be able to read or write. Faxes operate with or without paper ; in the latter case faxes are sent directly from the computer using a fax modem. This is a useful system in the current stage of transition for communicating with the world of atoms from the world of bits. However these are badly used bits, as it is not possible to edit or alter the fax we receive, change its format or its fonts, unless it is digitized by means of some OCR (Optical character recognition) system. The fax ties us to the sender rather than releasing us, as is the case with electronic mail, where the bits are at our disposal, allowing us all kinds of manipulation and editing.
