There is a danger that the networks could be used to transmit and amplify traditional and outmoded elements of schooling instead of providing a mechanism for the transformation to lifelong learning needed by all citizens … The way we shape and engineer the technology, tools, organization of knowledge and virtual communities on the expanding Internet information infrastructure will directly impact on the potential productivity, roles, and equality of opportunity of young people both in the near and distant future, and thereby will affect the kind of society we evolve into.
Predictor: Hunter, Beverly
Prediction, in context:The 1995 book “Public Access to the Internet,” edited by Brian Kahin and James Keller carries the chapter, “Learning and Teaching on the Internet: Contributing to Educational Reform” by Beverly Hunter, an educational strategist in the Educational Technologies Department of the technology firm Bolt, Beranek & Newman. She was previously the program director for Applications of Advanced Technologies in Science Education at the National Science Foundation. She writes:”There is a danger that the networks could be used to transmit and amplify traditional and outmoded elements of schooling instead of providing a mechanism for the transformation to lifelong learning needed by all citizens. Many well-intentioned efforts to apply technologies to schooling (often in the name of ‘reform’) still assume such factory-era constraints as segregation of learners by age, a sequential curriculum, everyone learning the same thing at the same time, learning activities confined to the school or the classroom, no participation of parents in the learning activities of their children, knowledge predigested by experts, teacher as authoritative knowledge base, memorization of facts today for use in later years, subjects isolated by disciplines, same roles for all teachers, right answers to all test questions, students following procedures written by outside authorities, class periods too short to think in, teacher as the only audience for students’ work, and abstractions separated from experimental context. The way we shape and engineer the technology, tools, organization of knowledge and virtual communities on the expanding Internet information infrastructure will directly impact on the potential productivity, roles, and equality of opportunity of young people both in the near and distant future, and thereby will affect the kind of society we evolve into.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Public Access to the Internet (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Learning and Teaching on the Internet: Contributing to Educational Reform
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 88
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne