- 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
IX. THE HOME COMPUTER
Education was always shared between home and school. The advantage of compulsory primary schooling became evident in the extreme case of illiterate parents. This simple event helped make nations great and spread knowledge more equitably. However, as the whole of society became educated the home has become more significant to the educational process, and in the case of some families domestic education has become the preferred option.
In this new era, thanks precisely to digital education, "schools will enter homes" along different lines and connections. Both telematic and videoconferencing networks will be placed at the service of education in a way that is currently hard to imagine. Families will therefore have to learn to organize themselves in different ways to receive the teacher at home. And schools, in turn, must better prepare to receive the family within the institution. In this way a new interchange will be created that is fair and equitable.
Nobody imagined that one day the best market for computers would be the home. This has now become a sociological and commercial fact of incalculable importance. For this reason, as we have said, schools must redesign their educational strategies, which have in general been based on taking children to school rather than taking school to the children... It is true that distance learning, in particular at university level, is adapting to this new reality, but it is also true that classroom education and distance education are still widely separated, two tangential spheres in our society. Below we will attempt to outline the process of integration between home and school through digital networks, without entering into the uncertain path of utopias, although alerting to the consequences of technological and pedagogical options available at this decisive moment for education.
Until recently computers were known as PC s because they had an owner, but they were isolated. They are now increasingly becoming "interpersonal", having no owner, as they are connected in a network and anyone can sit in front of them and appropriate the information tool for their own use anywhere on earth. The paths of telematic communications are wide and varied and grow continuously. Many of these channels of communication are slow and narrow (in bandwidth) but with the implementation of new materials, fiber optics for example, and with the impulse from the worldwide deregulation of telecom companies, cable companies and television, substantial changes can be expected in the speed and cost of computer communications in the short term.
