Issue

First, a new curriculum for managing information will be needed. Educators will finally have to take the long leap from provider of instruction to facilitator of information management. Students will need to be given more room to decide what information they think is important—and be taught the skills to make those decisions. Individualized study not previously possible will become a reality.Because of the maze of resources and the volume of information available, students will need longer blocks of time to explore, retrieve, evaluate, and synthesize information. The era of the 45-minute class period must come to an end.The Internet's capacity for human interaction—electronic mail and newsgroups—will mean the beginning of a new kind of cooperative learning. Cooperative groups will no longer be made up of the students in the room at one time. Parents, too, can participate. In addition, with such advanced tools as Mosaic and hypertext markup language, the collective study of a subject may be carried on over years, not weeks or months.The information superhighway is already daunting to many teachers. K–12 education must respond by making resources available, such as software and services designed and evaluated by teachers to help them navigate successfully to materials for their students.—Mitchell Sprague is a language arts teacher at Mendocino Middle School and the Technology Mentor Teacher for the Mendocino (Calif.) Unified School District.

We must get away from old curriculum models that say each person has to learn every single item of information. This is a holdover from the olive grove, a remnant of the original academy.We know that when information is delivered as the person needs, wants, or asks for it directly, it gets "indexed" and remembered. I believe that we can develop "frames" from which to access information. As we form connections from one frame to the next, it starts to look like a web. In this model, not every person learns every item of information; people take what they need. With frequent evaluation, reinforcement, and practice, this becomes an effective method of learning new skills.Internet availability means the academy encompasses more of us each day; the body of knowledge is now estimated to double every five or six years. For example, genetic engineering makes great strides; I doubt they will find a way for us all to learn everything about any given subject in one lifetime. Frames—on which we hang ideas, develop questions, find solutions, and share alternatives—may be an ideal, timely model. This seems an appropriate way to grow with the current explosion of access to knowledge.—Elaine Winters is an instructional designer and curriculum developer based in Berkeley, Calif.

• access new information,
• adapt to new technology,
• make choices about the selection of information, and
• make practical use of that information.

Despite exponential growth in knowledge and immediate access to the information superhighway, we will probably see only a gradual evolution in curriculum. However, we must respond immediately with instructional changes that stress evaluation of sources and use of higher-order thinking skills.Teachers will become curriculum designers who talk with colleagues online to find the best curriculum and instructional methodology. Electronic searches can locate lesson plans, and educators can chat with specialists in their disciplines. We won't have to wait years for publishers to print changing maps of countries or rely on secondary sources. Instead, we must learn to discriminate among options that let us examine minutes-old satellite photos, select and add to databases, take field trips, and debate electronically.As we learn more about the power of telecommunications, we will move from fledgling uses of the superhighway (such as exchanging key pals with other countries) to more sophisticated applications that initiate real-life collaborative projects and simulations. Whether at home, living in remote rural areas, or sitting at computers in our urban classrooms, we will all face the challenge of becoming part of this worldwide community of learners.—Jo Blackwood is a communications teacher at Capital High School and facilitator of the Kanawha County Schools educational plan in Charleston, W.Va.