Computers have revolutionized education, but huge changes were observed in the last decade may be next in these computers are connected in a global education network.
Teachers and school students sample the water in Lake Baikal in Siberia than in other lakes around the world, other teachers and students take similar samples from local lakes and subject them to the same simple tests water quality. Via their school computers, they share their findings and comments on how water pollution problems are the same all over the world. They are part of a "global laboratory" project involving scientists who specialize in water pollution.
similar computer pins citizen activists, joined by students, teachers and researchers, the "sister watershed" groups around the world.
Amateur bird watchers and biologists pool their rare bird Misc North American network that is linked to bird researchers in Central America and South America.
The difference between classroom and community education are blurred in a global computer network. NGOs, government agencies, students and teachers are all involved in the real that has become for many, a virtual classroom without walls, and increasingly without borders.
Already have an experimental high school students sharing methods and results of studies in environmental quality with computer communications to jump borders. Elementary school children share their life experiences as a vision of the future in the same way. their messages to one another, passed with tremendous speed and simultaneously shared among many classrooms, provide a strong, personal lessons in science, geography and human relations.
Environmental curriculum development, pursued independently and often in isolation with teachers, school districts and universities over the past two decades, is now connected to the global platform that can respond immediately the increasingly complex and urgent environmental challenges the world faces. Teachers around the world are connecting with their counterparts to discuss how they can do their jobs better. Coordination of international educational projects is less burdened by the constraints of time and travel budgets as computer networks provide forums for cooperation.
The technology for this exchange takes advantage of the personal computer & # 39; s ability to communicate over standard phone lines using a modem. The simplest network connecting personal computers in the "store-and-forward" system echoes message from one to another, until everyone has a copy. These least-cost network are connected to the larger, faster computer operating as a primary information storage bank and relay stations. They in turn share information with others and tap the energy and the data in the computer systems of major research and educational institutions.
In many ways, this great new sea of information along with its own challenges, often akin to "drinking from a fire hose." The enormous glut of fact and opinion is impossible to take in, and has forced those who would taste the power to devise new ways to organize and sampling flow of information.
Electronic mail services and computer "sessions" to let students and teachers interact with each other privately or publicly as members of a large group discussions. Computer forums are organized much like those where people meet face to face, but the groups are inside each participant & # 39; s computer. Computer forums across time zones, participants review and comment on each other & # 39; write letters to their time and interest allows. Everyone able to read and think about the questions or statements posed in the conference, and all have co-equal chances to score.
Computer networks make classroom walls disappear. Real are environmental problems into the classroom with immediacy through computer networks, and students are collectively seek solutions and to researchers, Citizen activists, journalists, government officials and community leaders of all types. While access to computer networks is still remote for most people on the planet, it is becoming more and more available to the gatekeepers and opinion-leaders who help shape a shared understanding of the international situation. The growing abundance of many information sources available on computer networks, considering the well-stocked market, can also stimulate demand for more and better product with the world & # 39; s information consumers.
Citizen participation in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the conference), for example, has been ccoordinated through computer networks on seven continents, access provider organizations to complete the text of the preparatory documents of the Committee and provide a public forum for news and the issue of discussion. This availability of information has a major impact on how the event as conference permeates the media everywhere.
Underlying the often chaotic view presented by the media, structures are developing to direct new river information to support this and future generations to deal with issues it describes. A variety of efforts on computer networks for environmental provide some great models. At root, these features are all based on the same idea: that environmental problems must take a global perspective, but responded to the individuals working on the site, their communities, or his home.
All this new technology is not without cost, and developed countries are clearly ahead in providing computer access education. But even in the US, where the computer communications is becoming common, rather than profit educational reform is the dominant force in determining who gets access.
The harsh reality has spurred citizen computer network to join the International Association for Progressive Communications (APC) to make computer access broadly available. APC hosts several promising educational program on their computer network partners which now cover more than 90 countries around the world. These services can be tapped by anyone with a personal computer and a modem, often through a local call, at a cost of approximately equivalent to a newspaper subscription or monthly phone bills.
education projects offered on the APC network are examples of how low-budget computer interaction fits in Community programs and classrooms.