- 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
III. THE DIGITAL HABIT
Time for assimilation
Time is needed if habits are to be created. This time cannot be cut back unilaterally, and is not elastic, being linked to the mental demands made in assimilating novelty. This has been a main concern of psychologists such as Jean Piaget. The creation of new digital habits depends on the development of a new mind-set. Such a development cannot be improvised, nor can it be imposed from outside. It requires an effort of adaptation to the new features of a digital environment. We have mentioned the demands of time, for which there are clearly differentiated stages. The first hours serve only to learn about gaining access to the tools to be used (in general 10 hours are sufficient) followed by a learning stage (some 100 hours) and finally a lengthy practice stage. Only after 1000 hours can it be said that the user has incorporated (assimilated) a new digital habit in his or her study and working life. This almost logarithmic progression may be linked to the creation of new brain circuits in the distinct stages of assimilation of a cognitive habit. Much research still needs to be carried out on the matter but we believe it to be a case of internal constructive assimilation rather than a passive "impregnation" from an external environment. For this reason we must allow teachers time, encouraging them to assimilate these new uses for digital tools. Students will do so naturally as part of the lengthy period of learning provided by schooling.
One novelty of digital education is that students learn and use the technology much faster than their teachers. Any attempt to reverse this trend, forcing them to "tread water" is both hopeless and counterproductive. Often teachers repeat the same lesson year after year while their students have progressed ahead of the program because they can very easily gain access to more updated digital information. For teachers the main challenge of digital education lies in "teaching while learning", or to learn with and from the students themselves.
So far no-one appears to have created a predominantly digital school where as from the very first day of class the student has at his or her disposal all the elements necessary to create a digital habit without the need for other intermediaries. For example, no study has been made of the process of teaching handwriting to children "exclusively" using computers compared to those following traditional methods of learning. Lengthy experience with digital literacy leads us to consider that this method will be significantly more productive and quicker than traditional methods. However, the mere attempt to teach a small child to write pushing the keys of a computer rather than drawing letters with pencil and paper will be seen by many as a "forbidden experiment". However, we consider that this prohibition is simply an irrational taboo, impossible to justify. Some day in the not too distant future children will take to school a computer as light as a new pencil case for use in learning to write. Many however will have already learnt to do so at home, thanks to the computers of siblings and friends.
Such resistance to digital change is pertinacious. This can be seen from the fact that when we recommend the use of a portable computer in schools, and sometimes even in universities (as has happened to us in the case of disabled students, for example) it is necessary to overcome an enormous number of psychological and bureaucratic barriers that reveal the extent to which the computer is not welcomed but is barely tolerated by institutions. However, as we have said, such resistance will topple loudly, and digital education will become such a force that the education scene will be transformed for ever, to the astonishment of those who were unwilling or unable to make the "digital jump". In reality the wall that separates us from the digital world has already fallen, but few have dared cross over to the other side.
