While digital video will broaden the bandwidth of virtual interactions via information infrastructures, teleconferencing will never completely substitute for direct personal contact. We can expect a variety of social inventions to emerge that provide the best of both worlds. We are just beginning to understand how knowledge webs and virtual communities can reshape the content, process, and delivery of conventional distance education. Information infrastructures are the new type of learning device that is spurring this evolution, just as the steam engine was the driver for the industrial revolution.
Predictor: Dede, Chris
Prediction, in context:In 1995, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology commissioned a series of white papers on various issues related to networking technologies. The department convened the authors for a workshop in November 1995 to discuss the implications. The following statement is taken from one of the white papers, “The Evolution of Learning Devices: Smart Objects, Information Infrastructures, and Shared Synthetic Environments,” by Chris Dede of the graduate school of education at George Mason University. Dede writes:”To succeed in sustaining communion among people, distributed learning must balance virtual and direct interaction. A relationship based only on telephone conversation lacks the vibrancy that face-to-face interchange provides. Similarly, while digital video will broaden the bandwidth of virtual interactions via information infrastructures, teleconferencing will never completely substitute for direct personal contact. We can expect a variety of social inventions to emerge that provide the best of both worlds. We are just beginning to understand how knowledge webs and virtual communities can reshape the content, process, and delivery of conventional distance education. Information infrastructures are the new type of learning device that is spurring this evolution, just as the steam engine was the driver for the industrial revolution.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: E-learning
Name of publication: The Future of Networking Technologies for Learning
Title, headline, chapter name: The Evolution of Learning Devices: Smart Objects, Information Infrastructures, and Shared Synthetic Environments
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney