- 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
XI. PRESENCE AND REMOTE PRESENCE
Features of distance education
The system of classroom education that has been established for centuries has recently undergone great changes, many of which provoked by the growing demands of a population requiring increased culture and professional training but which for various reasons (distance, work, cost, etc.) cannot attend traditional courses. New distance courses are offered somewhere every day, but in general the public considers distance education as a second class or supplementary education at most. No doubt the difficulty derived from the ingrained belief that classroom learning is of intrinsically superior value. We feel that this prejudice comes from a static view of learning. It has been necessary to test the excellence of some educational proposals to change this negative image.
The subject of distance learning needs to be reviewed in the light of new technologies. We must recognize that at present we are not always equipped with good digital technologies to offer valuable education at a distance. Above all we face a moral dilemma: the fear of freedom. Teachers or lecturers at the front of the classroom seek to retain control of the educational process within the limits of a program that has been imposed in an authoritarian manner. Outside the classroom walls, the laboratory of the workshop, this physical control disappears and students are free to do a they wish. This distinction is misplaced however. It will always be necessary to exert sufficient self-control to be a responsible student, whether within the classroom or outside it. It is known that the conquest of moral autonomy is a long and complex process, but it is exactly the same for a classroom student as for a remote student.
Then there is the fear of change. This obstacle is essentially cognitive. Out of ignorance it is preferred to repeat what is known, hence the tendency to replicate with new technologies what was always done without them. For example, by reproducing on the computer screen the same text to be found in a printed manual, the same map or drawing, when use could be made of novel multimedia created by each teacher for his or her own courses, or use on-line satellite images, etc. This trend towards repetition is seen also in much of the available educational software, which in effect changes nothing, only reproducing the same material in a new format. Newspaper publishers, for example, were the first to overcome this stereotype when they established that digital readers did not just want to read the same newspaper on the screen. Many newspapers, though not all, have gone a long way towards creating a new digital language. This is not however common in the world of education, which is barely babbling its first bits....
Lastly there is the economic limitation from the high cost of digital communications in most countries. There is no point in establishing the most sophisticated of networks if communications between users, students and teachers are drastically limited by their cost. As we said, nobody would be able to learn to speak if a duty had to be paid for such communication. This is currently the principal disadvantage of remote education compared to classroom education, where no-one has to pay for a minute's talk, listening or viewing. But its advantages are also obvious. The cost of moving from one place to another, the time and effort involved in gathering together for a class disappear in the case of distance learning. This is not to say that ease of communication in itself will change education. The greatest obstacle will always be mental.
In this regard the concept of a flat rate for Internet, a monthly fee for communications 24 hours a day without any restrictions, is a novel and promising idea worthy of the new digital world. The widespread application of flat rates to all digital network technologies will make it possible to achieve the dream of a remote presence in a single unified network which so far has only been possible sporadically.
In addition, as we have said, there are the economic advantages from savings in transport costs represented by decentralized education. This considerable cost of classroom education is evident when comparison is made of the hidden costs (time and transport) and the great investments in building (built-over square feet) in the face of calculable costs (flat rates) and the investment in computer and communications equipment required by distance education. However, classroom habits retain their privileges in today's society, and only a mental revolution accompanied by an explosion in communications will be able to unbalance the conservative educational scene to which we are accustomed. We have no doubt that traditional, centralized, classroom education is heading for a catastrophe when it encounters a digital, globalized and liberated alternative.
