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Discovery

Education of the Future

The classroom of the future is here.

Catherine Woulfe

How are our children going to be educated? Will the "factory system" of today's schools be phased out as the Digital Age continues to computerize our society? Acclaimed futurist, Alvin Toffler, believes our education system is headed towards a far more interactive and personalized approach:

I can imagine our entire school system shriveling up. By everybody's measure, they are inefficient, ineffective and very expensive...If we understood people-to-people learning, and distributed intelligence, we could transform and accelerate the learning processes in fabulous ways that have nothing to do with schoolrooms and seats.

At present, our children are sent to huge schools and subdivided into grades and classrooms. They spend much of their time memorizing information that they regurgitate in tests. Grades are given our in much the same way a factory organises quality control -- all those with a certain score go on to the next level, while the rest remain behind for retooling. This system has worked brilliantly in the past -- the economy needed workers with skills such as basic math and literacy to work the machines of the Industrial Age. However, this system is simply unable to prepare our children for the onset of the Digital Age.

Our entire society is rapidly becoming computerised. With the onslaught of the Internet, a huge new world is becoming available to us, and technology is progressing at warp speed. The sum total of the world's knowledge is roughly doubling every four years.

How can we expect teachers, let alone students, to keep up with this nearly unfathomable expansion of knowledge? The answer, according to Mr Toffler, lies with the very technologies that have brought about this need for change -- computers.

Children, as we have always known, have a wide range of brain power, and we are now beginning to understand that they also have a wide range of learning styles. Some learn best through application, some visually, some auditorially. Personalised computers that use text, sound, photos and video hold the potential to tailor lessons to each individual child. Lessons will proceed at that individual's pace and be driven by the individual's natural curiosity. No longer will teachers hold the keys to knowledge in the classroom -- they will become motivators, problem-solvers who help keep the students inspired and happy in their environment.

The school environment is likely to go through a lot of upheaval as a result of this modernising. Multimedia interactive learning will make possible a much more decentralised system and there will no longer be any need to physically gather large numbers of students at central sites. Neighbourhood schools may make a comeback -- even block schools could be introduced, where ten or fewer children gather at someone's house. It could also mean much more home schooling.

There will still be a need for socialising, of course, and this could bring a new approach to the way we view children's sports teams, hobby clubs and outside-school interests. a huge amount of socialising would also be done over the infrastructure -- with children all over the world involved this could give our children a greater insight into other cultures and religions.

The new system will be focused on learning how to learn, rather than learning a specific body of information that could quickly become obsolete. This could see a decrease in the amount of time spent at school -- learning could become an ongoing tool used by students throughout their entire lives. Our educations will never end. We will be able to access specific information at the exact time when we need it, and will be able to contact the people who can help us. This will lead to people becoming extremely specialised in their fields, and knowledge will therefore continue to expand exponentially.

Our educational system will soon face extreme social pressure to radically reform or else. We can expect it to go through a dramatic restructuring and downsizing as we take advantage of the ever-increasing technologies that are becoming available to us. We are just beginning to change the shape of the educational system, and we are largely unsure of the eventual outcome. At some point, though, we'll have a completely different system.

When will we arrive at that point? Will it be the year 2050? Maybe 100 years from now? Peter Hutchinson, head of Public Strategies Group, has news for you. His prediction is ten years.

    Penguin
Books (NZ)

Thank You and Congratulations!

Our thanks to the entrants and supporters of the School Science Journalism Competition. Entries came from around the country and covered a diverse range of topics, demonstrating the breadth of science and technology and the important role it plays.

As winner of the 1999 Competition, Catherine receives $150 and a prize package courtesy of Penguin Books, and a year's subscription to the New Zealand Science Monthly. The Highly Commended entrants receive copies of the Natural World of New Zealand from Penguin and gifts from JADE.

Cloning

Cloning, just like many technologies, can be hugely beneficial if used correctly or could be a very nasty thing if abused. Making clones of top, high performing livestock would help the farm industry enormously. The medicine industry could have a thousand uses for cloning -- including mass cloning of animals for making drugs or proteins that could fight disease. There is even talk of cloning healthy body cells to replace unhealthy cells to cure things like heart disease.

James McKnight is in the sixth form at Lytton High School in Gisborne.

Life on Mars

So how did it all start? Why would we want to live in another planet when we seem happy here on Earth? Some people think current global problems, such as overpopulation, pollution and poverty are more than enough incentive to colonise a new planet and start on a clean slate. Others think colonising a new planet might be a breakthrough in technology and a huge step for mankind, even greater than the "small step" Armstrong took on the moon. Yet others believe that we should colonise another planet and create in it a "reserve" population of humans, so that in the unfortunate event of a natural disaster, such as meteor colliding with Earth destroying all life, the human species might still live on.

Stephanie Martell is in the seventh form at Otago Girls' High School and has a strong interest in science and technology.

Genetic Engineering

Scientists believe that this technology offers great potential for creating many crops with resistance to pests and diseases, increasing the tolerance to surrounding conditions like salty soils or temperature extremes, longer shelf life and improved composition like adding nutrients and antioxidants or colour. We won't know the effects on people unless research is done. Should we give this technology a chance?

Ellen Connor is in Year 12 at Riccarton High School in Christchurch and has been studying applied biology topics including genetic engineering.

Catherine Woulfe is 16 years old and is a pupil at Havelock North High School. She has interests in writing, music and drama, and hopes to make a career out of writing.