- 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
V. NEW TOOLS AND OLD
Slides and liquid Crystal
The impact of technology in the computer age has been of such a magnitude that many teaching resources are disappearing, being substituted by electronic equivalents. This is the case of the overhead projector. In recent years this has become a very popular system, to a certain extent complementing and replacing the blackboard. Overhead projection techniques were in fact a significant advance for teachers as they helped to change some very ingrained habits. In the first place, teachers can continue to talk without turning their backs on the class, while writing or drawing on the slide (of particular importance when giving lessons to the hearing impaired). In addition overhead projection has the advantage of being economical and portable. Even more important, it facilitates the organization of courses, as the transparent sheets act as an ordered collection of notes. Lessons are usually prepared in advance, data can be concealed or revealed at the requirement of the lecturer and if necessary one can retrace steps without losing information, and new information can be drawn in with a special marker.
Many of these interesting educational uses of slides have been preserved and perfected in modern systems of digital presentation. These are shown on computer screens and can be projected onto much larger screens, and can be modified in a number of ways using electronic pointers and sensitive buttons. One currently fashionable technology is the use of overhead projectors with liquid crystal displays connected to computers. In these cases individual slides are replaced by electronic pages generated by computer which are preserved in memory as just another file. This prevents the need for the always troublesome handling of transparent sheets as the speaker has only to press a key or button to project the series of slides in the order desired. All this also helps to keep down production costs, reduce the time for preparation and especially to facilitate changes to projections during the course.
