Part One The Promise: An Educator's History of the Internet
1986 1993 1994 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Summary
By 1997 the Internet and the World Wide Web are a phenomenon. A rush for businesses to establish E-commerce on the Web is underway and all kinds of hopeful E-businesses have been and will be started with, as it turns out, very flimsy business models for actually generating revenues. The Internet will continue to dominate conversations in both commerce and education circles into the next century. The E-Rate program for discounting Internet connections for schools and libraries has also been established, and the initiative to connect all schools gains momentum.
The issue of teacher preparedness is examined in the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education's Technology and the New Professional Teacher: Preparing for the 21st Century Classroom (NCATE)
"Some schools of education are in the vanguard of introducing technology into teacher preparation. Many are featured in this report. Yet most schools of education have not yet fully integrated technology into their programs for preparing teachers. There is a long road ahead."
"Teacher education institutions must prepare their students to teach in tomorrow's classrooms. Rather than wait to see what tomorrow's classrooms will be like, they must experiment with the effective application of computer technology for teaching and learning in their own campus practice."
"From time to time, someone invents a product or develops a practice which has an unforeseen and massive impact on society. The printing press, created by Johann Gutenberg approximately five and a half centuries ago, was such an invention. Who would have predicted that a press initially devoted to publishing the Bible and other religious texts would someday be seen as one of the forces undermining church authority? Who would have imagined that books, then owned by few and treasured as symbols of wealth and power, would someday be accessible to nearly everyone? And who could have foreseen a system of public schools organized primarily for the purpose of teaching children to read and to help them absorb the knowledge books contain?"
"The introduction of computers and other technologies into schools is occurring at the same time that three decades of research in the cognitive sciences, which has deepened our understanding of how people learn, is prompting a reappraisal of teaching practices. We know from this research that knowledge is not passively received, but actively constructed by learners from a base of prior knowledge, attitudes, and values. Dependence on a single source of information, typically a textbook, must give way to using a variety of information sources. As new technologies become more readily available and less expensive, they will likely serve as a catalyst for ensuring that new approaches to teaching gain a firm foothold in schools."
"Despite the technology changes in society, being a teacher in American schools too often consists of helping children and youth acquire information from textbooks and acting as an additional source of expertise."
"The new technology will transform the role of the teacher as thoroughly as did the introduction of printed textbooks. More than in the past, teachers must become advisors to student inquirers, helping them to frame questions for productive investigation, directing them toward information and interpretive sources, helping them to judge the quality of the information they obtain, and coaching them in ways to present their findings effectively to others."
"Re-educating the existing teaching force will not be easy and will require extensive professional development over many years. The problem will be greatly compounded if those teachers entering the profession now and in the future have not been adequately prepared to use new technology."
1986 1993 1994 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Summary