- 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
New educational niches
Digital networks make it possible to reach many companies, institutions and homes that could benefit from a quality of educational currently unavailable to them because of the cost of travel to a traditional university, timetable demands, employment activities, etc. For these reasons the leading universities of the world have incorporated distance education services with the help of new digital technologies which retain the same level of quality and grant exactly the same academic degrees. A global university network is fast developing which homes will in future be able to link into. It is hard to imagine such changes without abandoning the classroom approach in which we have been formed.
Distance education goes out to the student wherever he or she may be, and will not require presence at a central building. Instruction will be given so as to enable interaction from home, office or company. While classroom university is centripetal, requiring the simultaneous presence in one place of students and teachers, distance education is centrifugal, radiating throughout the planet.
Cost/benefit calculations must thus be based on new parameters, structured on the "weight" of information rather than the space occupied by classrooms, workshops, laboratories, libraries, etc. The volume of information sent per unit of time depends on the bandwidth of the channels of communication. A harmonious and profitable growth should involve in stages the various communication modalities. As educational requirements increase new channels of communication will be set up. There is no theoretical limit for growth in this digital world.
