Computers have caused a revolution in education, but the huge changes in the last ten years can be surpassed in the next, as the computer is connected in a global education network.
Teachers and students test the water in Lake Baikal in Siberia, while in other lakes around the world, other teachers and students similar sampling of local lakes, where they have the same simple water quality tests. On their school computers, theyexchange their results and their observations about how water pollution problems are the same all over the world. They are part of a "global laboratory" project that includes scientists, specialized in water pollution.
A similar computer network Pins citizen activists, joined with students, teachers and researchers in "sister watershed" groups around the world.
Amateur ornithologists and biologists to pool their rare bird observations in a North American computer network is connected towith bird research in Central America and South America.
The differences between the classes and community education blur on global computer networks. Voluntary organizations, government agencies, students and teachers are all in a real that has become, for many, a virtual classroom without walls, and always without limits.
Already, pilot projects have students share the methods and results from field studies of environmentalQuality of time with the computer telecommunication leap national boundaries. Elementary school children to share their life experiences end visions of the future the same way. Your messages to another, are at a breakneck pace, while shared by many classes, passed strong, personal experiences in science, geography and human relations.
Environmental education curriculum development, independent and often pursued in isolation from teachers, school districts andUniversities over the past two decades, is now linked in a global forum that responds instantly to is the increasingly complex and urgent environmental problems of the world. Teachers around the world connect with their colleagues to discuss how they can do their job better. The coordination of international education projects is to provide less burdened by the constraints of time and travel budgets as computer networks, forums for collaboration.
The technology for thisExchange uses the ability of personal computers, via standard telephone lines to communicate with a modem. The simplest networks connect computers in a "store-and-forward" system, the echo messages from one to the next, until all the copies. This combined least-cost networks to larger, faster computers as a central data banks and relay stations. They in turn the exchange of information between themselves and tap the power and data in computer systemsextensive research and educational institutions.
In many ways this is the new human sea of information presents its own challenges, which are often similar to "drinking from a fire hose." The enormous flood of facts and opinions is impossible to accommodate, and has those who use their power to develop new ways of organizing and sampling the flow of information forced to taste.
Electronic mail services, and computer "conferences" Students and teachers can communicate with each other privately or publiclyMembers of the big debates. Computer conferences are organized similarly to those who personally know where the people-to-face, except that the meeting rooms are located in the computer of each participant. Computer conferences to overcome time zones, because the participants review and comment on written answers to the other, as their time and interest. Everyone gets to read and think about asking questions or statements in a conference, and everyone has the opportunity to cooperate.
Computer Networkingmake walls disappear from the classroom. Real environmental problems are common in the classroom with immediacy via computer networks, and the students are looking for solutions and understanding between scientists, citizens, journalists, government officials and leaders of the community of all kinds. The access to computer networks is still far off for most people on the planet, it is more and more available, the gatekeepers and opinion leaders to shape the common understanding ofglobal situation. The growing wealth of diverse sources of information available over computer networks when viewed as a well-stocked market, may also demand for more and better information products produced by the world's consumers.
Participation of citizens in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), for example, was ccoordinated via computer on seven continents, allowing NGOs access to the complete text of the preparatory committeeDocuments and public forums for news and discussion topic. This availability of information has a dramatic effect on how an event such as UNCED permeates the mass media everywhere.
Be provided behind the often chaotic view through the mass media, are structures that empower the development of the new flows of information on this and future generations to deal with the problems, which describes a lot of channels. A variety of efforts in computer networking for environmental education offer somegreat role models. At the root of all these efforts are based on the same idea: the environmental issues must be considered with a global perspective responds, but that of individuals to act locally, in their own communities or homes.
All of this new technology is not without costs and the developed countries are clearly ahead in providing access to computers for education. But even in the United States, where computer telecommunications becoming commonplace, and not as a profit education --Reform is the dominant force in determining who has access.
The harsh reality of computer networks has motivated people to do together in the International Association for Progressive Communications (APC) band computer network access widely accessible. The APC hosts a number of promising educational efforts on its partner computer networks, today in more than 90 countries around the globe. These services can be by anyone with a computer and modem, are often accessed viaa local call, at a cost roughly equivalent to a newspaper subscription or monthly phone bill.
There are programs of education projects on the APC networks, examples fit like low-budget computer communication in social programs and classrooms.
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