The prediction, in brief:

The competitive nature of these resources will undermine the monopolistic hold schools have on their communities; schools will either have to become excellent or face the extinction of their educational role. The pressure to compete will come in several forms: pressure for better courses, for vouchers, and for home schooling. The first pressure will be on courses that are difficult to staff. Soon there will be hundreds of physics netcourses, for instance, from which students can choose … When there is a sufficient quantity of quality netcourses, the most telling argument against school choice and vouchers – the lack of choice in poor districts – collapses. Network resources can exist anywhere, provided computers with network access are available. And at least some of these resources will be relatively inexpensive, enabling even the poorest students to enroll.

Predictor: Tinker, Bob

Prediction, in context:

In 1995, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology commissioned a series of white papers on various issues related to networking technologies. The department convened the authors for a workshop in November 1995 to discuss the implications. The following statement is taken from one of the white papers, “The Whole World in Their Hands,” by Bob Tinker, the president of Concord Consortium, he has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT and a reputation as a pioneer in constructivist uses of educational technology. Tinker writes:”Network resources may have a different effect on mediocre and substandard schools by creating out-of-school alternatives that are more attractive and clearly more valuable than the local school. The competitive nature of these resources will undermine the monopolistic hold schools have on their communities; schools will either have to become excellent or face the extinction of their educational role. The pressure to compete will come in several forms: pressure for better courses, for vouchers, and for home schooling. The first pressure will be on courses that are difficult to staff. Soon there will be hundreds of physics netcourses, for instance, from which students can choose. For the school without a qualified physics teacher or for the disgruntled student who cannot stand to be lectured by the teacher the school has, there is certain to be at least one far superior netcourse alternative. When there is a sufficient quantity of quality netcourses, the most telling argument against school choice and vouchers – the lack of choice in poor districts – collapses. Network resources can exist anywhere, provided computers with network access are available. And at least some of these resources will be relatively inexpensive, enabling even the poorest students to enroll.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information

Subtopic: E-learning

Name of publication: The Future of Networking Technologies for Learning

Title, headline, chapter name: The Whole World in Their Hands

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney