- 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
II. EDUCATION AND ITS CONTEXT
Education and the state
In this transition towards a globalization of education the state should change its focus. It is urgently necessary to grant the greatest possible freedom to national educational systems so that they can find their own way forward, stimulating international competition wherever possible. Sooner or later countries will begin to "buy and sell" education. This already happens indirectly through the mass media, but the interchange will be more genuine and effective in the case of the services without frontiers provided by digital education. These new international educational services are set to flourish in a most spectacular manner. Countries that refuse to open their frontiers to this new exchange of ideas and knowledge will inexorably fall behind. The state should guarantee and encourage this right of their citizens to travel unhindered through the new territories of the digital world.
Thus with the passage of time, in the same way that open television filters into the most totalitarian of states, the most progressive education will penetrate all the regions of the globe, following the paths of telecommunications, tourism and transport, among others. Timetables and spatial restrictions will diminish, and each person or group will be able to opt for the courses that are most suitable to them. The freedom to learn and the freedom to teach must be preserved in their entirety, as guaranteed but not always as observed in practice by the constitutions of modern nations.
This will lead to the progressive disappearance of "captive" territories within the educational map. Students and their families will seek teachers and professors from the entire world network of education and will select those that best meet their demands and needs (and vice-versa?). Programs that exist in a certain region will be simply ignored if they do not satisfy family demands and the student's intellectual appetite. No one will be able to stop this from happening. Many of those who currently work to create educational programs at municipal, provincial or international level believing they can control the contents of learning down to the smallest detail will be overrun by events in a global education.
There will be no room in the globalized world for a "single mind" in education, for any program directed by ministries, for curricula imposed by a given educational doctrine. The new society of knowledge will overcome all these barriers, leading to a society that will be digital, global and free. There are reasons to believe that we are not proposing a utopia. Preparation will be needed. Few are those who are aware that the Berlin wall of education, which keeps states and individuals isolated, has already fallen....
