Computers have revolutionized the education, but with the connection of these computers to the global education network, the dramatic changes that have taken place over the past decade may be overtaken.
Teachers and high school students sampled in the waters of Lake Baikal in Siberia, while in other lakes around the world, other teachers and students collected similar samples from local lakes and conducted the same simple water quality tests. Through their school computers, they exchange their results and how they observe the same water pollution problems around the world. They are part of the "Global Labs" project, which includes scientists specializing in water pollution.
A similar computer network guides civic activists, along with students, teachers, and scientists, in the "sister watershed" community around the world.
Amateur birdwatchers and biologists bring together their rare bird sightings in North American computer networks, which are linked to bird researchers in Central and South America.
On the global computer network, the differences between classroom and community education are blurred. Volunteer organizations, government agencies, students, and teachers all participate in a real fact. For many people, virtual classrooms have become virtual classrooms with no walls and no boundaries.
The pilot project has allowed high school students to share the methods and results of environmental quality field research and use computer communications to cross national borders. Pupils share their future life experiences in the same way. Their messages are delivered at an extremely fast rate and shared in many classrooms, providing powerful personal lessons in science, geography and interpersonal relationships.
Over the past two decades, teachers, school districts, and universities have often pursued the development of environmental education programs independently and have now become a global forum that can immediately address the increasingly complex and pressing environmental issues facing the world. Teachers around the world are reaching out to their peers to discuss how to get the job done better. Since computer networks provide a forum for collaboration, time and travel budget constraints have reduced the coordination of international education programs.
This switching technology takes advantage of the ability of a personal computer to communicate over a standard telephone line using a modem. The simplest network connects a personal computer to a "store-and-forward" system that passes messages from one message to the next until all messages have a copy. These lowest cost networks are connected to larger, faster computers that act as central information repositories and relay stations. They in turn exchange information with each other and tap into the power and data in the computer systems of major research and educational institutions.
In many ways, this huge new information ocean presents its own challenges, often similar to "drinking water from fire hoses". A large excess of facts and opinions is impossible to accept, and those who are willing to try power are forced to design new ways to organize and sample the flow of information.
E-mail services and computer "meetings" allow students and teachers to communicate openly or as a member of a large discussion group. Computer conferences are organized in a very similar way to people meeting face-to-face, except that the conference room is on each participant's computer. Computer conferences go beyond time zones because participants review and comment on each other. Written posts, as their time and interest allows. Everyone can read and think about the questions or statements raised at the meeting, and everyone has an equal opportunity to answer.
The computer network is making the walls of the classroom disappear. Real environmental issues immediately enter the classroom through a computer network, and students are seeking understanding and solutions with scientists, civic activists, journalists, government officials and various community leaders. While access to computer networks is still out of reach for most people on the planet, it is increasingly available to gatekeepers and opinion leaders who help shape a common understanding of the global situation. If viewed as a well-stocked market, the richness of the various sources of information available through computer networks may also spur demand for more and better goods from information consumers around the world.
For example, citizens participated in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development [UNCED], coordinated through computer networks on seven continents, enabling non-governmental organizations to access the full text of the Preparatory Committee's documents and provide a public forum for news and issue discussions. . The availability of such information has had a huge impact on how events such as UNCED permeate the mass media everywhere.
Based on the chaotic views put forward by the mass media, structures are evolving to guide new information rivers so that generations and descendants can deal with the problems it describes. The various efforts of the Environmental Education Computer Network provide some good models. Fundamentally, these efforts are based on the same message: environmental issues must be viewed from a global perspective, but locally, individuals in their own communities or families respond.
All of these new technologies are not without cost, and developed countries are clearly leading the way in providing computer access to education. But even in the United States, where computer communications are increasingly popular, profit, not education reform, is the dominant force in determining who gets access.
The harsh reality has prompted citizen computer networks to unite in the International Progressive Communications Association [APC] to make computer network access widely available. APC has carried several promising educational jobs on its partner computer network and has now expanded to more than 90 countries around the world. Anyone with a personal computer and modem can make these calls over a local phone at roughly the equivalent of a newspaper subscription or monthly phone bill.
The educational programs offered on the APC network are examples of how low-budget computer communications fit into community programs and classrooms.
Orignal From: The role of computers in promoting environmental education
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