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Learning In A Digital Age

"The education industry is the only 'knowledge business' still debating the utility of technology. Just consider: While 75% of all Fortune 500 companies are completely networked, only 3% of instructional rooms are connected."

Lowell Milken,
1996 Milken Educators Conference

The American public school system is charged with the responsibility of preparing children and youth to successfully live, learn and work in today's and tomorrow's society. Increasingly that society is changed by technology. Just as medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, communications, entertainment and service industries have embraced technology to remain current and viable, so must education.

The youngsters who enter the classrooms of today have never known a world without global communications, space travel and digital entertainment. The electronic tools of today are their tools, influencing the way they socialize, communicate, learn, earn spending money and interact with families, communities and friends, both locally and globally. Yet these same youngsters, for the most part, are asked to check their technologies at the door, as they enter their classrooms of today.

"There are thousands of buildings in this country with millions of people in them who have no telephones, no cable television, and no reasonable prospect of broadband services. They're called schools."
Reed Hundt,
Federal Communications Commission Chair

But that picture is changing due, in part, to the significant public investment of resources into education technology. That investment in technology will be returned to the public through:

Technological Fluency: Students with skills using contemporary technologies
Economic Viability: Students whose skills are an asset to the workforce
New Dimensions to Learning: Increased academic achievement due to added relevance and student engagement in learning
A Catalyst for Reforming Education: Better educational opportunities in our schools due to technology
Home-School Connection: Increasing communication between parents and teachers in support of children and youth.

New Designs for Learning: Technological Fluency

"A recent review of U.S. businesses also revealed that - besides reliability, a positive attitude and a willingness to work hard - firms paying high wages are looking for employees with "new basic skills." These skills include basic problem-solving and reading abilities above the high school level, the ability to work in groups, good oral and written skills, and the ability to use personal computers."
Richard Murnane and Frank Levy,
Teaching The New Basic Skills, 1996
"Today's definitions of technological fluency evolve from the intersection created by the technology pull - that is, advances in what the technology can do, and how it is used in the world beyond the classroom - as well as the pedagogical push - changing views of learning reflected in the educational standards and assessments that drive instruction."
Milken Exchange Paper by Dr. Kathleen Fulton
on Technological Fluency

The 1997 President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology suggests "the next century will require not just a larger set of facts or a larger repertoire of specific skills, but the capacity to readily acquire new knowledge, to solve new problems, and to employ creativity and critical thinking in the design of new approaches to existing problems."

The President's Committee of Advisors is addressing a new way to thinking, a new literacy. This translates into working smarter not just working harder, using these tools to extend youngsters' intellectual capacity just as Americans have always used tools to extend the workers' physical capacity. Dr. Ed Wenk, a science advisory to the White House, defines technology to be: "The combination of human imagination, inventiveness and the electronic tools to transform ideas into reality." To be technologically fluent is to be able to engage this ability at will.

Developing Economic Viability

"An estimated 60 percent of new jobs in the year 2000 will require skills possessed by only 22 percent of new workers."

America's Children and the Information Superhighway

New information technologies have profoundly changed the workplace. The "basic essentials" which our youth need to successfully compete in the job market now include information technology literacy. The Children's Partnership reports that more than half of new jobs require some form of technology literacy, an estimated 60 percent of new jobs in the year 2000 will require skills possessed by only 22 percent of new workers and, in the early 1990s, workers with computer skills earned 10 percent to 15 percent more than workers without such skills. They also report that the cost to businesses is $25 to $30 million annually in training, retraining, low productivity and poor quality of product.

Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics indicate that the number of low-skill jobs is rapidly diminishing.

Labor Trends

"As increasingly capable machines join Americans at the workplace - join them as both CO-workers and competitors - the pay-off to education and training has soared, and the penalty for lacking skills has stiffened... while the information highway promises to speed some people to desirable destinations, it may leave others stranded in the technological version of inner-city ghettos."
Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor

The business community has been an important voice calling for students to develop technological literacy. As early as 1991, in the Department of Labor report "What Work Requires of Students," the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), identified skills and attributes necessary for employment in the workplace:

Resource allocation skills-handling time, money, materials, space, and staff

Interpersonal skills-working on teams, teaching others, serving customers, leading, negotiating, and working well with people from culturally diverse backgrounds

Information skills-acquiring and evaluating data, organizing and maintaining files, interpreting and communicating, and using computers to process information

Systems skills-understanding social, organizational, and technological systems, monitoring and correcting performance, and designing or improving systems

Technology skills-selecting equipment and tools, applying technology to specific tasks, and maintaining and troubleshooting technologies

Currently there is a misalignment between the skills the marketplace requires and the current knowledge/skill base of today's worker. This is apparent in the Information Technology Association of America's recent statement that "one out of every 10 jobs in the information technology industry is going unfilled."

If the United States is to remain an economic power in today's technological world, policy makers must recognize the critical role that technological fluency plays in providing this nation with a workforce with the intellectual capital to compete in this global economy.

New Dimensions To Learning

Technological fluency with contemporary tools will add new dimensions to students' learning of basic skills. Just as today's scientist accesses digital images from the Mars' probes, so will elementary school science students. Just as doctors practice surgical techniques in virtual environments, so will biology students dissect virtual frogs. Just as global communications allows citizens a real-time window on world events, so will students be able to explore other countries and cultures by connecting to them in real-time.

Ultimately students must be able to use the tools of this era to read, write, think, solve problems and communicate about issues involving mathematics, science, social studies, physical education and the arts. New learning theory supports the common sense approach that engaging learners in meaningful, relevant, action-oriented activities results in deeper understanding of concepts and theories.

Technology and telecommunications can connect learners to resources, experts, information and opportunities increasing each student's:

ability to apply learning to real-life situations;

proficiency with the basic skills;

contributions and connections to his/her community;

readiness to succeed in today's world of work;

ability to learn, think and act independently;

ability to solve problems, both individually and within a team;

ability to construct knowledge from information sources;

ability to effectively communicate; and

ability to use technology as a tool for his/her own purposes.

The new basic of technological fluency adds new dimensions to the study of the traditional academics that will ultimately deepen students' understanding of concepts, processes and facts through real-time application, and will ensure that students are acquiring skills with contemporary tools at the same time as they are achieving the academics.

Catalyst For Reform

Technology has the potential to serve as the catalyst for the educational change which the public is seeking. Just as these contemporary tools are changing surgical techniques for doctors, production techniques for the entertainment world, decision making for stock brokers, and production techniques based on robotics for manufacturers, so are they changing teaching and learning approaches for the educators. Educators are beginning to capitalize on these tools in the following ways:

provide information-rich environments which more efficiently meet the individual needs of students;

increase the competence and knowledge level of teachers through networked communication;

provide the catalyst for improvement of schools through the reflection on current practice in light of the need for "new basics;"

provide better data on student progress;

increase the access to learning opportunities for students as well as community members; and

increase the communication among parents, teachers and the community.

The challenge to educators will be in creating a learning environment that employs contemporary technologies in ways which assure student gains in technological fluency, new work place basics, life long learning and the academics within the context of the digital age.

Home School Connection

"Through networking, e-mail and other means technology benefits teachers, students and their families by making connections between the home and school. It increases the flexibility of teachers' hours by allowing them to gain access to their work from home; it provides parents greater access to their children's teachers and schoolwork; and it extends students' access to school so they can continue learning at home."
Lowell Milken

While thought often turns to global communications when connecting schools to the Internet, one of the most powerful applications is in the connection to the home and local community. Daycare centers are already experimenting with the provision to parents of glimpses of their children's days through camera shots accessible via the Internet. The fact that this is appealing to the working parent or guardian should come as no surprise. Parents are extremely interested in their children's well-being.

A telecommunications connection could provide:

a visual glimpse by parents (and other family members) into the school day of young children;

more frequent, convenient parent-teacher-child interactions via interactive video networks;

real-time messages to parents from their youngsters about learning progress;

posting of student projects, homework assignments,

lunch menus, field trips, other basic school information;

parental access to curriculum materials to support their youngsters' learning program at home; and

more consistent, specific data from teachers about students' progress.

The linkage could more closely line parents or guardians and educators together as partners in assuring an excellent, quality education for these youngsters.

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