Key issues we feel must be addressed in creating the Education Superhighway are listed below, related to the questions in 'Superhighways for Education'.
1. Do schools see an advantage in connection to broadband networks?
2. What sort of education applications and services would schools most like to see?
3. What are schools' particular concerns about broadband networks?
5. What broadband applications and services should be developed for FE?
6. Are there features of broadband which will allow more efficient use of resources?
7. How is SuperJANET affecting teaching?
8. What services are in demand by HE?
9. Should SuperJANET be expanded to FE and schools?
10. What contribution can broadband networks make to basic literacy and lifelong learning?
11. Company use of broadband for workplace training
12. What educational applications and services could be available, now and in the future?
16. How would network providers ensure network compatibility, nationally and internationally?
17. How can network and service providers limit access by pupils to undesirable materials?
19. How will the needs of the schools and others in rural areas be met?
20. Are there International opportunities, lessons or constraints which should be borne in mind?
1) Do schools see advantage in connection to
broadband networks?
Schools and colleges are not yet aware of what services and access to resources will be possible over broadband. Indeed nobody can yet predict what will become available in this rapidly developing area. Schools do however already see much benefit in connection to wide area networks and believe strongly that the broadband networks will bring even greater benefit.
The concept that the superhighway is simply internet but faster is just a starting point, albeit a useful reference point. The Education Superhighway will be much more than this.
The Internet is not broadband, and it is not yet sufficiently easy to use, it's technical and cultural approach is a barrier to many users, it does not easily adapt to managed access and it does not provide secure access to valuable information, which is a barrier to serious involvement by publishers and other information providers.
From our contacts in schools we believe that there is broad consensus that we should start moving now to develop use of the broadband, with urgency, being flexible to adopt new possibilities as they emerge.
Access to multimedia material and particularly the creation of multimedia services will determine the growth and development of the education superhighway. Current initiatives to convert existing material to digital form will quite quickly be superseded by the need for continuous creation, editing and presentation of material. Creation of a multimedia production industry is the most productive investment which the UK could make at the present time.
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2) What sort of educational applications and
services would schools most like to see?
Over-riding concerns:
Schools are very concerned that appropriate applications and services should be available in the home environment, to support the learning that happens in schools.
Services are required for classroom teachers and teachers with special responsibility, such as Special Needs Co-ordinators, to enable them to bring resources to bear on the learning environment of pupils.
Developing an understanding of interactive multimedia as a discipline, and the new literacy skills young people will need to be competent with interactive, creative multimedia is essential. This must include developing a basis for assessment and examination of creative multimedia output and electronically generated output generally. Children must be creators as well as receivers of multimedia information and services.
The seriousness of the changes beginning to happen requires that the nature of I.T. be emphasised. The ability to be literate with and through I.T. is the major skill required by our workforce for next century.
General issues and concerns:
Greater differentiation will be possible, with materials able to be accessed through different routes.
Schools expect that there will be a rich collection of multimedia resources available, able to be controlled by users.
Guidance and direction will be required if we are to avoid the superhighway becoming like a library without a catalogue.
Pupils with disabilities could be strongly helped. Special software tools to control windows, text to speech utilities and access devices for those with physical handicaps need to be available.
Distance learning materials could radically enhance the amount of learning that happens in student's personal time.
Distance learning materials will enhance the education accessible to children out of school for health or other reasons.
Changes in educational possibilities and changes in society caused by the development of the superhighway will also create a need for change to the national curricula of the United Kingdom.
Applications and services which aid teachers in managing learning will free-up productive teaching time and help teachers to adopt new technologies and new methods.
Senior management are a critical group who need first hand experience of the education superhighway. It must be a priority to establish services for these groups.
A developmental body is required which mirrors SCAA's activity in specifying the curriculum. It must involve education and industry and both formal and informal approaches to education must be represented.
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3) What are schools' particular concerns about
broadband networks?
To develop use of the education superhighway it is essential schools can build on their investment in I.T. made so far, and on the good practice established by teachers. The Superhighway must be introduced into schools alongside continuing development of the excellent educational I.T. usage the Government has stimulated through past initiatives.
Universal entitlement to full two-way, fully symmetric, interactive multimedia broadband is critical, while accepting that some, such as those in metropolitan areas, will have an even higher bandwidth level of access. While technologies such as satellite broadband delivery with a narrow band back-channel may be able to deliver some services, this would constrain development of more powerfully educational services such as video-conferencing and collaborative multimedia work using video. Suitable access must be affordable to ensure universal entitlement is a reality. It may be necessary to adjust regulatory mechanisms to help.
Schools consider universal entitlement as a economic necessity for the wealth of nation as a whole.
The use of the internet is being rapidly espoused by schools and needs to be embraced, but it is not broadband, and government initiatives need to make this clear.
The education system as a whole needs to be given the flexibility to manage and the resources - time, money and support - that will be needed to effect change. The resources to create change must be available in addition to the resources necessary for continuing use of the superhighway to educational ends.
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It is widely believed that broadband networks could be strongly supportive of staff development and teacher training.
There are however some aspects of support and staff development that can only be delivered by local I.T. Centres. Such Centres have the expert human resources, the local knowledge of the current state of development of individual schools, and the local facilities, all of which are an essential component of successful improvement of teaching and school management.
A major issue for staff development is how important multimedia is relative to text, educationally and as a medium for communication.
There is also an issue that as teaching and learning styles change, the teacher becomes the facilitator of learning. Use of broadband networks for staff development could give teachers first hand experience of the change of learning styles.
For teachers and trainee teachers to make most effective use of the education superhighway for their own development, they need to personally own equipment and have access. It should not be solely left to the individual initiative of teachers or their ability to afford equipment to achieve this. If superhighway access is essential to the job of being a teacher, as we believe it will be, then equipment essential for this should be considered similarly to the essential equipment for other professions with regard to tax and provision by employers.
Tackling the changing roles of the teacher and learner requires identifying the key benefits a real live teacher brings to learning. We must maintain appropriate involvement of teachers alongside a growth in individual responsibility for learning and independent/distance learning/computer based techniques.
Understanding the role of peers and co-learners and the benefits to be gained in learning outcomes by enabling communication of various forms will also aid staff development as well as learning by students.
Continuing change in education and technology calls for continuing staff development and training. It must become understood by teachers that they must take personal responsibility for their lifelong learning. Management structures and incentives, such as credits for training provided direct to the teacher, not school, to make it personal training, and an entitlement to training as part of their professional standing, would help this. A requirement on schools to track personal development of teachers and support it would make the issue a management responsibility for Governors and Heads.
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5) What broadband applications and services should be
developed for FE?
The comments on the opportunities for schools with broadband networks all apply equally to FE.
Vocational usage of the superhighway could become very great.
It is likely that a Europe wide or even global approach will develop in this area.
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6) Are there features of broadband which will allow
more efficient use of
resources?
The ability of colleges to become virtual institutions with their students learning in home and work environments, using broadband networks to maintain teacher/learner contact and dialogue, must have great potential for allowing more effective use of FE resources.
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7) How is SuperJANET affecting teaching?
The usefulness, accessibility and general worth of the superhighway will be dependent on the speed of access and the available resources.
Continuing HE development into broadband communications will serve the whole education community in the future.
8) What services are in demand by HE?
The core services of mail and news are widely used and rarely cause problems. However the potential exponential growth of demand for video services and resources will undoubtedly cause pressure on SuperJANET.
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9) Should SuperJANET be expanded to FE and
schools?
Our contacts with schools and educationalist suggest that, while there will be some advantage to schools in linking them to SuperJANET, the requirements of the schools sector are different in many ways to those of HE, as will be the usage they make of broadband networks. It is essential the education superhighway services for schools and FE colleges should be considered and provided for in their own right.
Hopefully regional network operators will take up the challenge and offer digital broadband connectivity. If they do not do so, extension of SuperJANET may be necessary.
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10) What contribution can broadband networks make to
basic literacy and lifelong learning?
It is very likely that mass market access to broadband networks, using set-top boxes, will become widespread in the late 90s. Education services are considered by virtually all involved in creating interactive TV trials to be central to the mix of services consumers will wish to purchase. It is essential that individual teachers and lecturers and education institutions are enabled to contribute their expertise to the development of mass market education services of many kinds, including adult literacy, workplace training and lifelong personal development and learning. Above all this will require flexibility in the management of education and a commercial framework which allows educationalists to be freed from parts of their existing role in order to concentrate on development of superhighway services.
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11) company use of broadband for workplace
training.
Broadband networks have the potential to make workplace training and staff development programmes much more easily accessible, at lower cost to companies in terms of lost time.
Employers could pay for access to training materials that staff can access from their homes.
It is a critical national need that we retrain and refocus the workforce, on a continuing basis and where possible through self-help initiatives, to suit the changing needs of a dynamic economy.
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12) What educational applications and services could
be available, now and in the future?
Supporting and promoting the development of the UK's educational industry, our institutions and our commercial companies, must be a priority. The UK has great expertise and capability which only requires leadership and enabling for it to bloom. We are capable of having a leading position worldwide, and while we must capitalise on the best of what is available from the rest of the world, we are capable of exporting broadband education services ourselves. For cultural and commercial reasons also we must not allow others to dominate this rapidly growing market sector.
Development of techniques and software for information access, navigation, selection and mediation - to help people grapple with the immense amounts of information becoming accessible - are vital if UK developed services are to be of the highest quality. Key people are the courseware developers who are currently working in schools, colleges, IT Centres, UK educational software houses and UK publishers. Enabling these people to work on broadband services and to develop their expertise and their careers in this area is critical.
The key feature of successful applications and services will be their impact on learning effectiveness and achievement. We must measure their effectiveness against both new and existing standards and these must be defined. This is a key area for partnership between education and the commercial sector.
The capacity for development and responsibility for development must be built back into the education system at all levels. As a country we need educationalists to be heavily involved in curriculum and education service development. Though some of this will naturally be done on a commercial basis, full breadth and diversity of commercially successful resources and services can only be achieved if much development is happening within education as a natural part of government funded education provision. A sustainable, on-going, commercial basis for development and creation of the educational information and resources available via the superhighway is necessary, and this in turn requires that there is a sound free market, with individuals and institutions in control of their education budgets and with those budgets being predictable to enable long range planning.
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Education will be best served if superhighway infrastructure companies provide standards within an open framework.
There is an uncommon level of agreement in the industry that ATM networking is the way of the future and products are now emerging that make this viable.
It is important that all understand that the emerging standards of the superhighway are being driven by the nature of the mass market technology, such as set-top boxes, not by traditional computer technology. Set-top boxes are by their nature cheap consumer devices with small amounts of memory, no hard disc and no keyboard. As such, traditional office computer operating systems cannot be supported. The trend is for publishers to work increasingly with multimedia authoring and run-time systems such as Macromedia Director and Oracle Media Objects. Though a minority of superhighway users will access it through desktop PCs, this will be done by the PCs implementing the multimedia run-time software environments, not by superhighway services and resources being dependent on office computer operating systems.
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16) How would network providers ensure network
compatibility, nationally and internationally?
ATM is an internationally accepted standard (as defined by the ATM Forum). Over this various client/server protocols are being used worldwide, but standards such as DSMCC are emerging.
It is imperative that applications written for this environment should be independent of server, network and set-top box/computer supplier. Products such as Oracle Media Objects, Macromedia Director and Sybase's Momentum/Interplay offer the correct level of independence.
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17) How can network and service providers limit access by
pupils to undesirable materials?
Though service providers can present only selected materials within their services, the nature of the Internet and superhighways is that there will be a multiplicity of services available to many users. Even if controls are made available to parents, some will not prevent their children viewing material some would consider undesirable.
Each user of the system should be identifiable to the system by a PIN number, smartcard or some other key. Because of the on-demand or narrowcast nature of the services each user can then be presented with material which is appropriate to them or which they have chosen.
In the school environment it is possible to exercise effective control. Educationally specialist network access software, such as Acorn InterTalk, can already provide control of services and materials accessed, on either an inclusive or exclusive basis. Such systems, while providing network access to all stations on a school network, allow individual user levels of access to be set. Education will therefore, by choosing appropriate hardware and software for their institution, be able to work with pupils to develop their understanding of the unconstrained information networks they will be able to access when adult (and which some may already be able to), progressively giving pupils wider and wider access as they become older and more responsible.
Censorship and control of information is a sensitive issue which must be addressed. However, we must acknowledge the worldwide nature of superhighways.
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Copyright is a world issue which will be handled at world level. The UK needs to be strongly involved in this and the needs of the education community must be strongly represented.
It is a fundamental need in education that learners can use, re-purpose and re-present a very wide range of materials. They must be permitted to do this electronically or they will find the education superhighway services stultifying.
Those constructing the learning environments for learners, the teachers, lecturers and developers of services, will need to make use of resources and materials from the superhighway in a wide variety of ways, at all levels from individual classroom and work units for particular learners to nationally published materials. If content owners do not allow this to happen through appropriate sub-licensing they will dramatically constrain the usage education is able to make of their materials and hence their sales. This issue is not at widely understood and the UK which leads in creative use of IT in schools is leading in proving the educational requirement and benefit when this is possible, as evidenced for example by the Hampshire LEA Horizon Project.
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19) How will the needs of schools and others in rural areas
be met?
Potential technologies are ADSL, satellite and microwave.
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20) Are there International opportunities, lessons or constraints which
should be borne in mind?
The UK is well positioned due to the nature of the installed cable equipment, the fact that new plant is being installed and the regulatory environment.
The UK could lead the world in the education sector next century. This is predicted to be a major growth area of the world economy. To do this we must all, education, business and government, move rapidly to seize the opportunity.
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