- 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
Today: knowledge disseminated
When society began to prosper, knowledge began to be better distributed among most of its citizens, together with adequate technology. As the savings potential of the community increased, families began to equip with the best technology while schools, for various reasons, were not always capable of following this trend. At the end of the century in more advanced communities schools have ceased to be the only privileged space for learning and teaching. Their relative importance in the transmission of knowledge has begun to wane significantly as they lose their monopoly on knowledge. This change in roles is positive because the school of the future, released from many impositions of curriculum thanks to better use of new digital technologies for the communicating of knowledge over distance will be increasingly important in the socializing process of children and adolescents. It will become a more creative environment for meeting, open to the world. Its greatest privilege will be precisely to be able to gather together a few to communicate with many.
This swing in the educational balance in favor of the home can be seen in many interesting situations. In the United States for example there are increasing numbers of families from a high professional level that have decided to no longer send their children to primary or secondary schools (so that they reach university without having been in classrooms). In these cases the parents themselves have become the teachers of their children, requiring a very special family and economic organization. Such "learning without schooling" which many will consider impractical and undesirable is however frequent in the case of prodigies and exceptional talents where permanent extra-curricular tutorial assistance is considered preferable to formal schooling. Perhaps in future this informal method, currently reserved for the privileged few, will become one of a wide range of educational alternatives.
In effect, the good news is that today the quantity and quality of technology available at home for teaching and learning is more than adequate. The problem is that it is not always possible to apply this technology for educational purposes. We must recognize that the expanded school is rich in equipment and poor in ideas as to its educational use. This is an important fact in the face of our chronic penury in scholastic matters. We should incorporate this large family investment into the educational process as soon as possible. To do so schools should make intelligent investments that complement or supplement those that have already been made at home. And the most important investment is not in machines but in ideas.
