- 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
IV. THE EXTENDED SCHOOL
Historically there has always been a very close relationship between the forms and contents of teaching and the social systems for the production of goods and services. During the industrial revolution schools were true "teaching factories" as education adopted the productive system model in all its aspects. The best schools were the largest, in the same way as businesses discovered the benefits of mass production. The incorporation of vast masses of workers, mostly illiterate to the productive system, required huge literacy programs. Architecturally the design of learning spaces did not substantially differ from that prevailing in plants, factories and warehouses. Externally they were very similar, and internally large, cold class-rooms were occupied by dozens of students sitting in rows in seeming replication of the assembly lines of the period. A teacher at the front of the class, like a foreman at the head of the workshop, uniforms or overalls for all, bells and sirens marking arrival, departure and work breaks. Work and study both took place on Saturdays. Summer vacations were originally designed so that children could help their farming parents with the harvest, and were then made to coincide with workers' paid vacations. The system was rigid and programs were inflexible, both in the factory and the school. Social and conceptual changes were slow, production was guaranteed for decades in both the educational and manufacturing environment. That world has changed.
The new millennium will see new productive guidelines. New companies operate with extraordinary flexibility and multiply their services worldwide. It is said that the new industry will require "brain labor" rather than "manual labor". We are entering the era of knowledge. Flourishing industries without smokestacks have arisen such as tourism, communications, information technology, biotechnology, health services, all moving huge volumes of financial and human resources. As a result, education will have to change. The demand for a profound change in the education of new generations is urgent, but the inertia of the educational system is great.
