Author Bikram Suri
Teacher: Mary Negrete
UCSD Writing Lab WI09 Final Essay 3
Date: 12th March 2009

Reference:

http://www.williamdraves.com/works/internet_change_report.htm

How the Internet and computers are affecting educational systems and moving us towards a Knowledge Society through the means of e-learning
If someone was to peep into the future and try and take a shot of what lies ahead in terms of technological innovations and its impact on the human society, he will be totally at a loss of words. We live in very uncertain times and best we can do is to make edu-cated guesses at what lies in the future of computing and technol-ogy and how these transformational changes will impact the way we live, learn and go about doing our businesses. The advent of Internet and the World Wide Web has impacted all spheres of our lives, especially the way we learn and impart education in our schools. The best guide to where we are headed and what is ahead lies in the history. The printed book was the biggest innovation of the fifteenth century by the West to bring in a revolution in the learning and education. Like the printed book, which was opposed both by the Islamic clergy and the Chinese Confucius scholars; the Internet is the next biggest technological breakthrough, with its own share of opponents in society and governments world over. The Internet is highly disruptive technology which promises to bring in gigantic proportions of openness, empowerment to the learner like the printed book and changes in the field of education and learning; thus nudging the human society towards knowledge based society through the e-learning paradigm.
A large part of the world societies especially women in cer-tain cultures like Islam and certain parts in India, which were bereft of the learning and knowledge imparted by traditional schools will now get a chance at learning and attending classes right at the con-venience of any physical location of their choice, may it be their homes, their place of work, or a formal classroom. The age as a bar-rier for learning is shattered. People can now learn new skills and gain more knowledge at a later stage in life to compensate for the opportunities they missed in earlier phase of life due to lack of re-sources or for other personal reasons. We can now attend university and school classes sitting at home in the middle of the night. Geographic and time zone barriers are no more relevant and because of the laws of economies of scale due to the open nature of the Internet, the cost of e-learning would be drastically lower than traditional schools; thus making it affordable for men, women and children in the remotest parts of the world to learn skills and educate themselves on different new subjects.
The three most common scenarios of e-learning being used today and some of the futuristic evolutions that look probable; one in which there is a synchronous classroom where students collect in a boardroom to attend classes via high speed satellite links while the instructor is able to guide the students through a class via a video-conferencing facility and interact with students in live mode. The students may be separated geographically across different cities within a country. This mode has some constraints due to the costly technological limitations and high maintenance costs. The second mode is via total software based solution like WebEx or LiveMeeting whereby the students and instructor can interact via live chat and the student display is centrally controlled by the instructor. The third scenario is the offline mode in which the classes are self paced and students and log into a central website and follow the class instruction at their own convenient pace, however, within a stipulated time frame. The above mentioned scenarios of e-learning are currently being followed in one form or the other with slight modifications, if any. Apart from the three broad models, there are, of course, internal institutional web portals and online learning websites being hosted and maintained by all educational institutions and corporate which are dealing with the business of e-learning. What we are seeing now in foreseeable future is the advent of total paperless electronic tablet like device hooked to very high speed wireless satellite communication. These devices would be highly portable and light weight. We may even see holographic technology being incorporated into these devices whereby a student would be able to muster the group energy and power of collaborative learning of entire classroom in his or her place of occupation; may it be a municipal garden, or a home, or a place of work or anywhere he or she chooses to be. The information flow or the content flow would be ubiquitous and we would see seamless integration of social utilities within the place of learning.

Let us now look at the edifice of learning in a knowledge society and what role would e-learning have to play in this and the role of the teachers. In the schools of tomorrow, the students would be their own instructors. The guru within or the innermost wisdom within each student would lead the student to the path of knowledge and the computer software would be a tool in this journey. The traditional concepts of literacy no longer suffice. Knowledge and education has to go beyond the basic premise of traditional concepts which are, reading, writing arithmetic etc. What we will require to learn as learners would be the dynamics of underlying technologies, acquaintances with foreign languages, how to live like a useful member of the society and as a knowledge worker in the organizations we work in. Coming to the role of the class teacher in this whole process, the term “the sage on the stage will become the guide on the side”, has already been coined. The class instructor would become as a facilitator and a guide or simply a resource. The Internet and the technological innovations of the future would free the traditional classroom teacher from spending most of the time if not all on routine learning, remedial learning and repetitive learning. Teacher would still need to lead these activities, but most of their time traditionally, has been spent on follow ups. Thus teachers spent most of their time as teaching assistants. This, the computer does well through software like expert systems, Artificial Intelligence and Natural language, speech recognition processing; indeed, better than a human being. Teacher in a knowledge based society would have more time to work on the strengths of the learners and to focus on them and to lead the learner to ultimate achievements. They will finally, have the time to “teach”.
So what was the role of education in our society so far and how is the technological innovation helping us move towards a knowledge society? Education traditionally meant subject knowl-edge, for example the ability to do multiplication, or a little knowl-edge of the world history. But the knowledge society will need process knowledge. In the knowledge society, people have to learn how to learn; it requires lifelong learning. But lifelong learning requires that it is satisfying and enjoyable and alluring. This is possible through the immense empowerment of the students and the learners through the technological innovation. The openness of the e-learning systems forms the basic edifice of the knowledge based society. Quoting my own example a middle aged person sitting in a remote town in India being able to pursue an online course in an American university was unimaginable a decade ago. However this is possible today; thanks to some of the major technological breakthroughs like high speed 24X7 networks, cheaper hardware, and low cost open software, which have already taken place and are in the process of being created.
As George Will wrote, “The future has a way of arriving un-announced.” The major technological upheavals occurring today in our society are already having a disruptive affect of gigantic propor-tions on our educational systems and the way we are going to learn and teach in the near future. This will eventually move our societies towards a knowledge based society; where learning is fast becoming a lifelong process. The orthodox way of teaching is being shattered due to the advent of the Internet and newer technological innovations; giving way to new forms of learning and along with that, new subjects and disciplines. People are taking advantage of the low cost e-learning tools to gain newer knowledge and fulfil their cherished dreams for higher learning at even later stages of life. The current three broad models of e-learning are bound to evolve and give rise to newer paradigms and tools. Technology at the end of the day is just an enabler and a tool; and a lot of routine jobs which the teachers did in the past in the classrooms are best done by computers through speech recognition, natural language processing, handwriting recognition and artificial intelligent software like expert systems. The teacher’s role will also evolve and they will finally be able to build up on the strengths of their pupils and help them achieve greater heights in life. The teacher will finally have the time to focus on teaching. The low cost of high speed networks which are up 24×7 will help ubiquitous flow of information and content across systems. Finally the goal of a knowledge based society would be achieved through the application of the knowledge gained in the virtual classrooms of the future.