- 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
I. A NEW ERA
Globalization, the first sign of change
There can be no doubt of the impact of the phenomenon of globalization on human relations and transactions of all kinds, although paradoxically we must recognize that so far the sector that has most tenaciously and frontally resisted such globalization has been education itself. There is no planetary "global education" in the same way as there is for example for tourism, which is undergoing explosive growth and mobilizes huge resources all over the world. Instead of promoting this centrifugal force, which would be a source of wealth and welfare, many governors and educators struggle to defend the indefensible. They stubbornly apply themselves to protecting their educational jurisdiction using old-fashioned nationalist arguments, which in this field, as in many others, have been overtaken by events. This narrow and centralizing attitude is profoundly mistaken and must change. In any case, what better way is there to defend local or national culture than by opening it to the world and making it known to all?
Unfortunately when proposals are made for changes in programs for education to incorporate new digital technologies domestic viewpoints are so entrenched that such initiatives often only serve to protect the status quo, to do more of the same. The "support" is modified but in fact nothing changes.... There is no explicit consideration of the integration of knowledge within a school, within similar schools or within regions and countries.
We believe that in future it will be essential for all our educational activities to be designed so that they are also valid outside our local circuit. It is still rare to find those who dare to promote the idea of transforming education into a cultural enterprise of a global nature, integrated both regionally and internationally as a genuinely "globalized" activity. In this regard the contribution of the Piaget school in recognizing the processes of "decentration" and "co-operation" in the establishing of knowledge. Piaget said that "it is impossible at any level to separate the object from the subject. There are only relationships between the two, but these relationships can be more or less centered or decentered, and the passage from subjectivity to objectivity consists precisely in this inversion of direction". For this reason the taking into account of the point of view of others is an aspect of growth and personal development. In addition communication with people from other environments and cultures strengthens social solidarity and individual talent.
In spite of certain promising initiatives such as the international associations formed by university colleges that involve regular exchanges of both students and faculty, or the systems agreed between countries for granting recognition to higher education courses, as happens in the case of certain university programs in the European Union, little is done at present to achieve systematic integration at regional or worldwide level. Scholarships and travel bursaries show the advisability of extracting an individual from his or her normal environment to promote personal progress and that of the community as a whole. It is true that there are thousands of students on scholarships traveling around the world, but there are a great many who decide to remain in the centers of greatest cultural attraction. Such cases represent a failure in the aim of these "educational exchanges" which is essentially to create two-way communication. We believe that in such a context digital education will invent new highways to help students and faculty to remain in touch over distance, bringing us all closer together.
In effect we know that new digital networks are capable of one day reverting this process of dispersal and waste of resources. For the present, educational communications are extremely limited and cannot be compared to any successful system in force in other fields. There are on-line information systems for airline reservations, and advanced banking systems, but nothing similar in the case of education. That is the current problem: there is insufficient awareness of the unacceptable lag in the field of communications in education. However, the future of education will depend to a large extent on the freedom to learn and teach provided by communications, over and above all physical and mental frontiers.
