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CREATING THE FUTURE
Perspectives on Educational Change
Compiled and Edited by Dee Dickinson
TECHNOLOGY AS THE CATALYST
Linda A. Tsantis, Ph.D.
Education has historically prepared most students to live productive lives in a family within a society. Throughout most of history the definition of the terms "productive," "family," and "society" have been quite stable or at least predictable. In the agrarian society, most people found work in their local community and often worked in small groups made up of people who were also relatives. Many people rarely ventured more than a few miles from their home; their macro view of "the world" and their micro view of the family were highly convergent. Educational systems for this era involved broad, general curricula.
The industrial society saw many families leave their traditional homes and move to other locations where they could find work. Often they would take parents, brothers, and sisters along, and the moves ranged from just a few miles to between continents. Newspapers, radio and the telephone brought increased daily awareness of events in other locales, and the macro view became quite distinct and separate from the micro environment. The education system expanded the number and types of courses available to meet the needs of increasing numbers of special skills which this age required.
The information society has caused a dramatic shift in most of the paradigms on which our traditional views of society are based. We now share instant communications around the entire globe, ship products wherever there are buyers, and purchase goods and even "fresh foods" from other lands as often as from our own. Major new industries arrive or vanish overnight, families are spread across continents, and it is hard to establish the boundaries of a society. Virtually the only predictable trend is continuing change. The macro view of most individuals now encompasses the whole world, and the micro view is dangerously close to focusing only on the individual.
The implication for educators is clear -- we must rethink most of our existing educational paradigms, for they are based on views of society that are no longer valid. Students must be prepared to accept, adapt to, and thrive upon change. The process of education must deal with the needs of students to develop both macro and micro strategies for dealing with their world.
Noted astronomer/educator Dr. Richard Berendzen expresses these needs eloquently: "We must learn to live as one family in our fragile, interdependent world, or we will surely perish;" and at a micro level: "The greatest classrooms of this nation or any nation are not in any school or any university. They're around the dinner tables in the homes. Insofar as global education is to be enriched and supported, education generally must too be nurtured. The issue is to deal not just with schools but also with homes and families." The industry in which I work as an educator both instigates and is in turn affected by the impact of information technology on society. Computer systems are at the heart of the paradigm shift from "manpower" to "mindpower" in the workplace around the globe.
One effect of the worldwide information processing capability is that work can now move to wherever skilled labor is available. Countries are now linked financially, economically, socially, culturally, and politically as never before, and this linkage is constantly growing. This can create new income and demand for more goods and services in countries which have educated their populations to deliver the skills in demand for the information age; it can rapidly drain countries whose citizens do not develop skills to keep pace with the emerging work opportunities.
Businesses today need a global perspective, and this globalization is changing the nature of competition and establishing more rigorous standards of quality in products, services, and solutions. Companies are learning that if they do not make use of the best available resources, their competition will, whether they are across town or across the world. Change has become a way of life, and he who masters change, wins.
The challenge to educators is clear. We must also establish rigorous standards of quality in the products, services, and solutions we offer to our youth. We must learn how to prepare all of our students for lives that are becoming more and more complex. We must prepare our students to master change.
Graduates must be prepared to deal with macro issues affecting their place in the world as well as micro issues affecting the quality of their lives. IBM Vice President Lucie Fjeldstad expresses the need as follows: "For IBM and companies like it around the globe, a world-class, competitive workforce and an informed consumer population is a strategic imperative -- a matter of our very survival."
It is not going to be an easy task for education to accept and even welcome change, because of the sense of impermanence and discomfort which will naturally result. Furthermore, marked changes in attitudes, life styles, health care, financial stability, and marketplace behavior cannot be predicted by trends because these changes either create new trends or they alter trends already in place. Science historian Thomas Kuhn writes that when a critical mass of involved problems creates enough uneasiness within a community, certain kinds of people are going to search for a new paradigm to replace their existing and now dysfunctional set of assumptions; Kuhn has dubbed these people "paradigm pioneers". These change agents serve an essential role in shifting outmoded educational paradigms to ones that are truly appropriate for our times.
How Technology Supports A Paradigm Shift
It is increasingly difficult for traditional teaching techniques to capture and hold the interest of a child who has been reared on video games and MTV. Many educators believe multimedia technology can provide the teaching tool base needed to reach these students. This technology combines computers and voice, animated images, music, words and databases with teacher-friendly authoring systems. Increasingly such technology is being used in connection with powerful expert systems, which provide teachers (or students) with the opportunity to design approaches or check their thinking with the help of a body of rules developed by educators who are content experts.
This technology can serve as a catalyst to help educators capitalize on the unique skills which each learner brings to the classroom. Multimedia technology can support an education environment in which:
- All children can learn-the computer can enhance the learning process, from enabling communication for a child who is severely disabled, to providing insight and new ways of dynamically visualizing concepts for children who have special talents.
Our goal must be to harness technology to provide the most engaging and dynamic system ever used in education, so that school once again embraces culture and learning in our society.
About: Linda A. Tsantis
Dr. Linda Tsantis is director of Academic Affairs for American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in Rockville, MD. Previously, she was Senior Education Planner with the Washington Center for Technology in Education, IBM Education Systems, where she guided a variety of IBM education initiatives involving federal agencies and education associations.
After graduating and receiving her master's degree from Old Dominion University, she received her doctorate in Special Education from George Washington University. She continued her postdoctoral studies at Harvard University, in Infant and Toddler Education; at Columbia University, in Neuroscience and Education; at Harvard Medical School, in Affective Development in Infancy and Early Childhood; and at George Washington University, in Computer Literacy.
Beginning her career as a Head Start teacher, she became an educational diagnostician at Georgetown University Hospital, then joined the faculty of George Washington University where she taught for fourteen years before moving to IBM in 1984 as an Academic Specialist.
Also in 1984 she received the "Excellence in Education" Citation for Outstanding Teacher Training Program from the Office of Special Education Programs of the US Department of Education. She was honored by the Council for Exceptional Children in 1987 for her work in developing Project RETOOL: Training in Special Education Technology for Faculty Teacher Trainers.
Dr. Tsantis' current projects explore the role of technology in neuroscience applications affecting transformational learning. Her work addresses the use of an intergenerational approach in breaking the cycle of disadvantage for low-income families.
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