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Preprints & Reprints THE DESERT & THE OASIS (Schooling is Obsolete - Learning Isn't) When I was a young boy my home had three principle books; a bible, an atlas and dictionary. So I found school to be an oasis of information, intellectual stimulation, and learning. It had books, smart people and resources. For me, going to school in the 1950's was a transition from a desert (the home) to the oasis (the school). Today many children have the converse experience, they leave an oasis (home) and go to a desert (school). Their schools are short of books, computer power, and information, with no access to international networks. Alternatively they have large class numbers which severely limits the access of the individual. So it is not unusual for children to leave this comparative desert and return home to an oasis of computing power, CD's, network connections and challenging interactive software. Each successive generation sees a widening of the gap between parent and child in terms of life's experience, educational opportunity and basic skills engendered by technological and social change. Today the accelerating technological change sees a gap that is wider then ever before. The average 10 year old now has more computer flying time (experience) than those of 50 or more years. So we have an interesting dichotomy! Young people have more time to interact with computers, more lifetime to experience their power and become expert, whilst the older population has no chance to catch up, no means of gaining the same depth of understanding and capability. Paradoxically, it is older people influence policy and make decisions on the technologies and methods of education. What they decide will impinge on all of those that are 10 years old and younger, and yet neither group is well qualified! At university we see a similar situation with students arriving to find inadequate access to terminals. Some of the smartest students now choose universities on the basis of the computing power available. How can you do a good or relevant degree with inadequate technology - you can't. Many students now have to buy their own PC to maintain their work rate to stand any chance of success. For those who reel at such a notion, because all students can't possibly afford their own personal computer power, it is interesting to reflect the amount of money spent on entertainment, games, software, hi-fi, cameras and televisions. It is also worth reflecting that PC power is falling in price at about an order of magnitude every 5 years. A lap top PC in the ?500 - ?1000 range is phenomenally powerful today. In 5 years such an expenditure will buy a ten fold increase in capability. Saying that PCs are out of the financial reach of students is an echo of the early days of the pocket calculator. Perhaps not a popular view, but certainly a pragmatic one! What hope then for the student who does not have the resources to afford a PC - soon, probably none at all! Lecture notes and educational material is increasingly being made available for the screen with the white board, overhead transparency, book and pad of paper gradually being usurped. Arriving for a class without your own lap will soon be as unacceptable as arriving without a pen. It seems only yesterday that both education and a job were for life. This is no longer so! Our world is now about Just In Time (JIT) education, experience and information. Technology and competition are pushing us in a direction of doing more in a shorter time. As a result we need a flatter and more general education to fit us for a world of increasingly rapid change. Specialist courses and modules are now starting to dominate beyond school and first degree level. Many companies now run their own academic, business and training courses tailored to their specific needs. In my company we have been running Masters Degree programmes for several years with contributors transported across the globe to present their material in a conventional manner. The inconvenience and expense of this approach first prompted me to teleport lecturers into the lecture theatre using video conferencing. A one hour lecture and 1/2 hour tutorial for only ?90 using an ISDN circuit over the Atlantic is a good deal compared to the cost of air transport. This is especially so when the lecturer is the best of the best! But this is only the beginning. We still have to gather all the students in one place - an increasingly difficult problem in a fast moving industry. So we have now taken the next logical step - a Masters Degree straight on the screen. Dial up lectures, experience and tutorials direct to the individual, but for the moment according to a predefined schedule. Soon it will have to be on demand. For those who balk at all this it is worth reflecting on the objections to the printing press, the type writer, radio and television. Education cannot remain in a time warp - it has to move on. Of course there will still be a place for the old technologies and methods, but increasingly they are likely to be in the back seat. Some of the medical degree courses in the USA now commence by the students taking on the loan of a laptop computer with the first two years notes loaded and ready to go. These notes however are not a transcription from paper to screen, but a new form - interactive multimedia. A new dimension in learning, with more depth, more meaning, more impact, where students learn up to 50% faster and retain 80% more. A further important factor is the extremely limited number of experiments and demonstrations that can be witnessed first hand. Economic and time constraints only allow a subset of experience to be gained by the average student. However, an increasing number of 'on screen' demonstrations and 'hands on' experiments are being produced. These offer a new and significant advantage that can never be realised in a real world laboratory. All the parameters and conditions can be selected and individually tweaked, with equations, graphs, and explanations embedded in the virtual environment. Optical fibre where you can adjust the refractive index, semiconductors where you can adjust the hole mobility, extreme conditions in pharmacy and aeronautics, accelerated gene mutation - the list is endless! It is now possible to enter the world of the electron, the cosmos or indeed the human body on any scale we wish. We can witness the oxygen exchange mechanism in the blood or the photonic interaction of light and receptors in the eye. All of this, and much more is available in the latest CD versions of human body encyclopaedias. Such first hand experiences illuminate our understanding of basic processes at a speed which was previously governed by the limited artistry of individual teachers on the black board with coloured chalks. What is more it can be done without the presence of the expert or the lecturer. Of course we should not abandon all practical experience, quite the reverse, but we could be more selective in choosing those that enhance understanding. The real classroom also has a further valued purpose - the bringing together of people for the chemistry of human communication and interaction. This should not be abandoned, it is too valuable, and conversely, should not be wasted. So perhaps schools and universities will become a new form of oasis, of intellect, interaction and specialist equipment and experience! All of this all goes well beyond the concept of our presently understood teaching and understanding mechanisms. It is immersive, self driven and self questioning. It is a radical change and challenge - the virtual school, college and university - the distributed oasis - open and available to everyone - all the people, all the time! It is also without geography, without limitation - a part of the new virtual community - a new dimension to living and learning. |