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A New View of the World and Themselves
Telecommunications programs in large and small schools, rural and urban
settings, are blooming with the result that learning is returning to the
student-centered approach used in earlier times. Telecommunications has
helped students of all ages get a real view of the world and see themselves
as members of a broad community. In 1991, Utah sixth graders anxiously
awaited news from their email penpals in Russia when counterrevolution
broke out. Although television broadcasts were immediately taken over by
the Russian military, email was amazingly not disrupted. American
students rushed to send news digests to their Russian partners, giving
them a window to the outside world until the coup attempt failed. Fourth-graders
in the same school, linked to a class in England, were shocked into a new
perspective when they learned the English town had been settled in 1225,
more than six hundred years before their own town (McCarty, 1995). In “The
Water Project,” sponsored by the International
Education and Resource Network, Washington state students learned they
could help far-away friends stay in school when they raised money to buy
water pumps for Nicaraguan villages, freeing their penpals from walking
miles each day to bring safe drinking water home (Copen, 1995).* Other
students learned the seaman’s perspective and to plot longitudes and latitudes
as they read the online log of a freighter captain bound from San Francisco
to Japan (McCarty, 1995).
A Network for Individual Exploration
Telecommunications has the potential to transform whole education systems
as well. Opened in 1996, the Townview
Magnet Center in Dallas brings 2500 high school students together in
six magnet schools, each emphasizing a separate discipline for career development,
and all with a strong emphasis on technology. All six schools are part
of an extensive, high-speed network that allows "students to access about
one hundred multimedia CD-ROMs, scores of software applications tools,
educational videotapes, and cable and satellite television broadcasts"
(Watson, 1996, p. 40). The cutting edge infrastructure connects 1100 computers,
11 file servers, 14 CD-ROM servers, and 300 laser printers. Textbooks have
been supplanted by online, multimedia information, more current and from
world experts. Inside-the-walls lectures are replaced by visits with online
experts and attendance in online conferences in the student’s chosen discipline
(Watson, 1996). This connection between the seeking student and the mentoring
expert is strikingly similar to the classical and Tudor students’ experience,
but at a distance.
Connections for Everyone
Just as impressive is the financially challenged "one-room schoolhouse"
program in a remote New Zealand location, where the distinction between
student and teacher has softened. High school students taking distant classes
by videoconference become mentors in email and fax modem use for their
younger schoolmates. More advanced students are allowed to surpass the
teachers’ expertise by accessing help from the internet in learning web-design
software. In a strong example of meaningful learning, a social studies
class links to students in a town once stricken by an earthquake. For a
civil defense project, the two classes collaborate on a plan for keeping
communications active during a disaster ( Coburn, Dobbs, & Grainger,
1995).
Using telecommunications, the teacher and expert act as guide for students
exploring their own interests and engaging in solving real world problems,
all the while honing their inner 'Tools
of learning" (Sayers, n.d.).
Coburn, D., Dobbs, V., & Grainger, S. (1995). Future -proofing the curriculum. Educational Leadership, 53(2), 85-87.
Copen, P. (1995). Connecting classrooms through telecommunications. Educational Leadership, 53(2), 44 - 47.
International Education and Resource Network. (n.d.). I*EARN Globe.
[On-line] Available:
http://www.igc.apc.org/iearn/globe.html
McCarty, P. (1995) Four days that changed the world (and other amazing internet stories). Educational Leadership, 53(2), 48 - 50.
Sayers, D. (n.d.). The Lost Tools of Learning. [On-line]. Available:
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
Townview Magnet Center. (no date). [On-line]. Available: http://www.startext.net/homes/townview
Watson, O. (1996) A networked learning environment: Toward new teaching
strategies in secondary education. Educational Technology, 36(5),
40-43.