"I am a girl and I'm 11 years old. I want to have a pen pal. I like soccer, music, swimming, animals, reading books, boys and to be with friends. I can't speak English very well, I will try anyway. My idols are Bryan Adams, Mariah Carey, Ace of Bace."
The message is not remarkable, but for many people the context is. Joanna sent her message electronically—via e-mail—from her school in Finland to students and teachers around the world, through a vast computer network called the Internet. She and her pen pals are all participating in the "virtual community" of telecommunicators, which is doubling its population every year.
Educators looking to make classrooms more student centered, collaborative, and interactive are increasingly turning to telecommunications networks.
Ranging in scale from local bulletin board systems (BBSs) to the Internet—the network-of-networks that connects more than 20 million users—these webs of connected computers allow thousands of teachers and students to reach each other directly—and gain access to quantities of information previously unimaginable.
Some planners believe that network technology will free schools from traditional budget constraints and increase the quality of information available to all classrooms. According to the National Education Goals Panel, the medium promotes "a dramatically decentralized and essentially democratic learning environment." For many people, networks are important tools for school reform.
"During the next decade, these emerging capabilities will leverage dramatic improvements in education," says Chris Dede, professor of information technology and education at George Mason University.
Beverly Hunter, educational strategist for Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Mass., in the forthcoming book, Public Access to the Internet (edited by James Keller), writes that the "central value" of networking is its capacity "to support or enable authentic learning experiences and cross-institutional collaborations needed for reform of education."
New Tools
Teachers can use networks to communicate with each other, gather information, and reduce professional isolation. Students using networks not only learn new inquiry and analytical skills in a stimulating environment, but, many people believe, they also gain an increased awareness of their role as world citizens. In rural districts, computer links can bring students into contact with other students and provide resources they might otherwise never obtain.
- The Shadows project, for example, organizes children internationally to measure the noontime shadows of a meter stick standing upright in their schoolyards. Then they share data over the Internet and use it to study the Earth in its relation to the Sun—while encouraging a common sense of purpose across cultural and geographic borders.
- In Claire Linker's 1st grade class at North Ridge Elementary School in Raleigh, N.C., students brought network technology to bear on what would have been a routine math project, counting M&M candies. They entered data onto a spreadsheet, then exchanged their information via e-mail with a class in a nearby rural town. "The whole idea of the project was just to introduce them to a new way to communicate," Linker says. Her lesson included conceptual skills—comparing the U.S. mail to e-mail—and practical skills.
- K12Net, a network of local bulletin board systems that exchange information with each other and connect to the Internet, offers specific discussion areas, or conferences, and interactive "chat" sessions for students and teachers. Teachers use K12Net to exchange classroom-to-classroom project ideas and proposals. The contact between students promotes "a commonality that transcends politics and traditional stereotypes to create a truly global village," says Janet Murray, librarian at Wilson High School in Portland, Ore., and a founding member of K12Net's Council of Coordinators.
- The Mendocino Unified School District in California in many ways exemplifies the ideal toward which telecommunications advocates are striving. With help from NASA's High Performance Computing and Communication K-12 Partner School Program and from private industry, Mendocino has established a direct Internet node—which allows much faster and more efficient access for more users than a simple phone line.
In exchange for financial and technical support, the district agreed to design curriculums that NASA in turn distributes via the Internet. After initial technical training, Mendocino teachers began developing appropriate curriculums. Twenty staff members spent three days visiting scientists at NASA. Grant funding allowed the district to offer small stipends for the training, and with modems at home some teachers could receive instruction through a dial-up program.
Mendocino teachers and students use their Internet connections for science research projects, while language arts teachers pursue collaborative writing and literature projects. To more fully integrate the new tools, the middle school set up three-hour project periods one day per week, allowing students adequate time to delve into the network.
Curriculum Challenges
Leisa Winrich, who teaches students with learning disabilities at North Middle School in Menomonee Falls, Wisc., connected her mathematics students to the KidLink network to share local weather data with distant classes. The Menomonee students compile the international data and send it back out over the network.
"We discovered that math does help us communicate," says Winrich. "We can grow to better understand our global neighbors and their environments by exchanging and studying numbers."
Integrating network technologies meaningfully into the curriculum is a pressing concern, and experts issue a cautionary note. The promise of new technology will only be realized "if practitioners master how sophisticated technologies empower more effective models of teaching, learning, and leadership," says Dede.
Hunter concurs, adding, "There is a danger that the networks could be used to transmit and amplify traditional and outmoded elements of schooling."
Unless network technology promotes interdisciplinary, interactive projects, educators may not use networks as a "catalyst for changing schools," says Jo Blackwood, communications teacher at Capital High School in Charleston, W. Va.
When she helped set up network training for district teachers, Blackwood made sure to include curriculum development. "You can't just do it in isolation," she says. And funding for new technologies often is directed too much toward the technical side. The result can be using computers as "electronic books," she has found. "That's not taking advantage of the assets the technology can provide."
In Devils Lake (North Dakota) Public Schools, access to a network has not automatically led to interdisciplinary approaches. Most teachers using the network "do so within the confines of their discipline," says Technology Coordinator Sam Johnson.
Vice President Al Gore has challenged communications industry leaders to connect every classroom to the National Information Infrastructure, the so-called information superhighway, by 2000. But U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown earlier this year reported that only a "small fraction" of classrooms have access to computer networks—or even telephones.
States can apply for federal aid under Goals 2000 to develop telecommunications networks, and the latest federal budget includes $700 million for the National Information Infrastructure over the next five years. More than half the states now provide an educational network.
Access and Barriers
Though access is far from universal, examples of rapid growth abound.
- North Dakota State University developed NoDak, a network for educators and students, with outside funding. At the end of 1992, the system had some 1,500 users. By August 1994 it had grown to include almost 10,000 users at all but five of the state's 265 school districts.
- About one-quarter of Texas public school teachers regularly log in to the Texas Education Network, TENET.
- More than 40,000 people now use PBS Online's Learning Link by dialing up to BBSs at local public television stations.
- NASA's Spacelink system has grown from a dial-up BBS in 1988, receiving 500 calls a month, to an Internet host "visited" by more than 1,000 people per day, who use it to gather everything from lesson plans to information on the current Space Shuttle flight.
- AskERIC, a project of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology at Syracuse University, receives more than 300 electronic mail requests for information per week. The service provides sample ERIC database searches, lesson plans, or references to more information.
Although some 80 percent of computers now in schools are too old to be useful for networking, according to the Commerce Department, Murray believes that "much could be accomplished with existing equipment if access and training were available."
Networks such as K12Net offer "training wheels," requiring only a computer, modem, a single phone line, and basic training. Some programs, including the Global Laboratory from TERC in Cambridge, Mass., offer quick entry into existing projects and connection to other classrooms with similar interests and needs.
Still, schools are significantly behind private industry and even American homes, almost one in six of which now has at least one computer connected to a modem.
To take full advantage of the telecommunications networks, experts say, requires school district planning, teacher training and support, comprehensive curriculum integration, effective assessment, and significant infrastructure investment.
Dede argues, however, that "the most important barriers are not technical or economic—although these are significant—but psychological, organizational, political, and cultural.
"When teachers and learners and parents want sophisticated, interactive technologies and know how to integrate these into new models of learning," he believes, "then the technical and economic barriers can be overcome with relatively little difficulty."
Mendocino Technology Coordinator Mark Morton agrees. "I think access will not be an economic issue in the future," he says. "Just as televisions and phones are not so much of an issue now." With increasing access, technical aspects will become less important and "the content and structure of the information" will determine the medium's value to education.
"Will we know how to use these incredible tools well?" Morton asks. "We didn't do too well with TV, but I have a lot more faith in this technology" because of its interactive nature. "Millions of people are involved in creating this communication space, not just a few."
Network Possibilities
Network Possibilities
Chris Dede, professor of information technology and education at George Mason University, puts the use of telecommunications into three categories. To take advantage of network technologies, he believes, curriculum developers should seek a balanced integration of each:
Knowledge utilities. Information resources and tools teachers and students use to gather information: libraries, databases—and other people, as with widely distributed inquiries.
Virtual communities. “Psychosocial” or “emotional” areas: people supporting each other and sharing common experiences; increasingly, this takes place through long-distance collaborative learning projects between students or educators, newsgroups, or online conferences.
Synthetic environments. Less frequently employed, this involves “putting people into a shared virtual world,” such as an online text-based museum or a mutually created simulation, and allowing students or teachers to explore and create together.
Start-up Resources
Start-up Resources
Many network service providers exist—national, regional, and local. Directories are available in most bookstores. Educational resources are also numerous. Here are a few samples:
K12Net. A network of bulletin board systems for teachers, students, and parents: Contact Janet Murray at (503) 280-5280, ext. 450.
I*EARN. The International Education Resource Network, connecting students and teachers internationally with electronic mail, conferences, and travel exchanges: (914) 962-5864.
PBS Online's Learning Link. A network of bulletin board systems based at local public TV stations: (703) 739-8464.
Global SchoolNet. Develops collaborative electronic mail projects: (619) 475-4852.
International Society for Technology and Education. Promotes use of technology in schools: (503) 346-4414.
TERC. Devoted to math and science, network programs include Global Laboratory and LabNet: (617) 547-0430.
Classroom Connect. A monthly educator's guide to Internet and commercial online services: (800) 638-1639.
ASCD Update used the Internet to solicit responses to the ISSUE feature on this subject; replies are on the facing page. ASCD will have a new public-access gopher site available on the Internet January 1. The address is gopher.ascd.org.