It is a true pleasure to be here today and to be able to see friends met at the I*EARN International Teachers Meeting in Australia in July, to meet personally people I have been communicating with on-line for a year or so and to meet so many others who share an interest in educational telecommunications here in South Africa. It is a particular pleasure to be in Cape Town. Everywhere I went in Johannesburg earlier this week, people sighed with envy when I mentioned I was coming to your fair city and its beautiful environment.
I trace my involvement in I*EARN to a year I spent in Seoul Korea as a 17-year old secondary school exchange student, discovering a new culture for the first time in my life. I later served as the director of that program and traveled extensively around the world. Yet, let me tell you, I feel 17 again with many of the same feelings of excitement and discovery as I come to Africa for the first time. While not minimizing the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead in your country, the historic changes that are underway here are an inspiration to so many of us around the world. I deeply appreciate this opportunity to learn from you.
I am here today to talk about community. Some of you may be thinking - I thought that this conference is on The Internet and Educational Computing.
The first definition for the word community in the Websters New World Dictionary is The people living in the same district or city under the same laws . Note that it's the people, not the place (which is relegated to the second definition) who define a community. Clearly, this type of community has characterized human existence since we started to live in groups on this continent and it obviously remains an important one today. I live in New York City, a city of 7.5 million people. It's often a shock to visitors to learn that within New York City are thousands and thousands of small communities. Where I live on Manhattan Island, it is the 2,000 people who live in about a 2 block area in which store owners are known, faces are familiar and block parties are held. We are a community.
From humanity's earliest days, this geographic proximity has defined communities and those outside were often unknown, feared, spoke a different language, and perhaps looked different. Often they were known only by lore and stories told by brave explorers who ventured beyond their community. Education about the communities outside was done by word of mouth.
The geography-defined learning in such environments led to a very narrow view of the world. Knowledge was based on what one could observe personally and the stories one heard of life on the other side the mountains, rivers, or oceans.
Along came printing and it changed our views of the world. First the Koreans in the 12th century and then Gutenberg much later in Europe introduced the concept that information and perceived knowledge could be recorded and passed from community to community broadly and consistently. No longer were we dependent on the stories and imaginations of travelers or limited by our own personal observations.
What resulted was an explosion of information available on more and more subjects as those who had access to printing and distribution of books could spread the world view in them around the globe. Libraries were built, periodicals have emerged on every subject imaginable--many more than what is humanly possible to read and understand. Our view of ourselves and the world has been, in large part, shaped--sometimes incorrectly--by these publications.
[Map exercise, using Peter Projection World Map and traditional map to demonstrate how printed information can be incorrect. ]
Websters New World Dictionary has a fourth definition: A group of people living together and having interests, work, etc. in common. In the past, both distant and recent, these groupings were defined by geography, printed knowledge, and funds for expensive travel. We now are on the verge of (no, we are already swimming in) a flood of information and data by way of telecommunications with which to form communities of people with shared interests and values. And tools, such as Netscape, WWW, gophers, etc., with which you will have hands-on experience here, are emerging to help us navigate through the billions of words available on-line.
For the first time, telecommunications allows us to build communities without regard for geography or information about other people which appears in printed texts. Jack Crawford, one of the founders of the international K12 Network, has recently written: "The individual has become the center of information and can, with gophers and now the World Wide Web, become the publisher. It has been said that freedom of the press is for those who own one. Networking gives everyone their own printing press." For the first time in human history, the potential exists for students in all parts of the globe to have a voice in shaping what the world knows about them. With such tools as HTML and the WWW, they have freedom of the press. It is a revolutionary time in which we live.
Even more importantly, telecommunications does not have to, indeed must not, remain simply a one-way consumer medium in which words are produced for others to consume. Unlike the printing revolution that accompanied movable type and the printing press, telecommunications is INTERACTIVE. The world is no longer defined for us from third-party eyes, but students have the potential for defining it themselves by direct interaction with others anywhere in the world. Today, in I*EARN, for example, we see 8-9 year olds who, when they hear of the Beijing Women's conference, or a natural disaster in Argentina, do not go to the TV or to their texts for information, but to their friends and peers in Beijing and Buenos Aires via telecommunications. They perceive that they have direct access to real and immediate information, not that which is filtered through editors or television news producers' eyes.
This, of course, affects how students learn and how we teach. To enable students to fully experience the breadth of learning that is at their fingertips on the Internet and through e-mail, the teacher's role changes from a Sage on the stage to a Guide at the side. No longer is the teacher seen as the source of all information (no one individual can master all the new available information), but rather s/he will facilitate and direct students in individualized self-learning.
How does I*EARN fit into this picture? I*EARN is a non-profit NGO which has built worldwide network of about 1,500 schools in 25 countries. It provides curriculum-based projects in a structured and supported on-line environment. Projects are teacher-created and interactive.
More importantly, I*EARN is a community of learners sharing the vision that through collaborative and interactive student work, the planet and its people can reverse the trends of the past. Such trends as: mistrust, environmental degradation, cultural insensitivity, maldistribution of wealth, hunger, linguistic and economic marginalization, war. The Union of Concerned Scientists issued what they called a "Warning to Humanity" last year, signed by almost 1700 scientists, including most of the living Nobel prize recipients. It states: "A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated." Not my words, but theirs.
Through on-line work, students from the earliest ages realize that their actions are deeply linked to the lives and welfare of others everywhere on the globe. Indeed, the Global Village is now a reality for many.
It must be a reality for all. As I mentioned earlier, I entered the field of global networking in the mid-1960s as an exchange student--one of the privileged few who were able to travel to another country for a year of incredible learning. I have now moved to the field of global telecommunications networking because it has the possibility of including thousands, indeed millions, who have been excluded in the past from interaction with peers separated by distance, language and culture, legal restrictions and financial resources.
Will this happen overnight? No. But, it can become reality if we link up with others who share the vision that no voice should go unheard and that no one has so much knowledge that they cannot learn from others. This can only happen, however, if a community of interactive learners is developed in which students (and teachers) gain a new view the world and their place in it.
What does this mean in practical terms for teachers? Let me describe several projects that have led to the creation of a broader I*EARN community:
1. I'd like to ask you to close your eyes (perhaps a dangerous thing at this point in the morning) and imagine this scene. At next year's conference perhaps we'll all be wearing virtual reality hoods and gloves. A young Nicaraguan girl, perhaps 7-8, is walking 8 km with two large buckets on her shoulders, trudging up a dusty mountain path to get water for her family from the only source of clean drinking water--a spring. Her community has a well, but because of waste and fertilizer run-off, the water in it is not drinkable. What does this have to do with telecommunications?
Three years ago, the I*EARN Center Coordinator in the Boston Area in the US traveled to Nicaragua to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds homes in the US and in other countries. While there, she learned of another organization that works with communities to bring potable drinking water to communities by capping wells and installing a pump that uses only bicycle parts. In such communities, young people are not able to attend school because they have to spend hours each day walking to the spring to bring drinking water for their families.
She returned and put a project idea on line on the I*EARN worldwide network in which students could work with this organization. This project directly related to the curriculum in a number of ways: Spanish language, health/science-water borne diseases, economics--appropriate technology not dependent on oil/electricity, geography--where is Central America? What is the geography of Nicaragua? Students in 5 countries around the I*EARN network joined together, sharing ideas on the issues raised in it. They then took the learning they gained to their broader communities and raised the $200 needed for each community's pump and sent it to the organization in Nicaragua. The power of the technology lay in its ability to bring people together on a scale not possible through traditional means of communication. Altogether, a total of over $10,000 was raised and pumps were built around Nicaragua. After the wells were capped, students around the network received letters from students in Nicaragua (someone carried a laptop to their communities and put messages on a network in Managua) thanking them because they were now able to attend school and share information on their society with students in other countries.
2. Ultra-Violet Radiation/Ozone depletion. Students in Australia have the expression slip slap slop (slip on a shirt, slap on a hat, slop on sun screen lotion). In many times of the year they are not allowed to come to school without a hat on because of ultraviolet radiation danger. Alarmed that the rest of the world was both ignorant of their situation caused by the hole opening up in the ozone layer above their country and actively contributing to the danger by use of aerosol sprays and release of freon from air-conditioners, students in Australia launched an on-line project to build awareness of the issue. They asked students around the I*EARN network to help collect data on ultraviolet radiation levels in their communities, which students in Australia would compile and publish in a newsletter. This newsletter would then be used to lobby local TV stations in other countries to include an UV rating in the weather report each evening to increase international awareness. And do you know what, it worked! Each night now, in Seattle, Washington, the weather report includes a UV Index report. And of course, along the way, students gained experience in scientific data collection, chemistry, atmospheric sciences, writing, publishing, and sharing their research with their community.
3. Global Art. Last year was the International year of the Family--as declared by the United Nations. Primary school students at 10 schools in 7 countries decided to exchange art depicting their families among each of the schools. So, plans were done on line, the art was prepared by students and physically exchanged. As a result, each school had an international art exhibit of 100 pictures from students in each of the 10 schools. Wanting to share the community they had built around this project on a wider level, students in Barcelona, Spain scanned the art and put it on the WWW for all to observe and learn from.
4. Heroes/Sheroes. Students in 7 schools in English and Spanish- speaking countries opted to share who their heroes were and what made them heroes. In addition to fitting into the Spanish and English language curriculum, students in essence created their own cross-cultural analysis of heroes. Students posted on-line descriptions of their heroes in both languages. After reading the group of heroes from students in a school in Argentina, someone observed that half of the heroes were from the US. What did this say about cultural transmission, someone asked. Why aren't any of the US students' heroes from other countries, another student asked? Students looked closer. Why are the majority of heroes men? a student remarked. Why don't we talk, instead, about sheroes? Out of the sparks of new wisdom came a new community of students looking at themselves and their societies with new eyes.
5. No Child without Smiles. Concerned about the war and suffering in the former Yugoslavia, I*EARN students in Spain initiated a project to bring school and medical supplies to Bosnian students in refugee camps in Croatia. This was done through an organization called Clowns without Borders. Clowns took a video-telephone, a laptop, supplies from Barcelona to Croatia to bring a moment of smiles and fun to a daily life of tragedy. The supplies had been bought with money raised by hundreds of primary school children who had designed and sold postcards in their local communities with smiles and a message of hope on them. In the process of doing this project, students gained skills in art/design, money management, geography, and contemporary affairs. Through a video-phone link with students in the refugee camps, the war became real to them as it never had before.
Each of these projects (and there are 30-40 others in science, math, social studies, literature, disaster relief, etc.) could have been undertaken by traditional means on a smaller scale. But each project demonstrated how communities of committed people can leverage their action and that learning can be enhanced when linked together through telecommunications.
I would like to demonstrate how technology can be used to build a broader community this morning by bringing into the room Kristin Brown, Program Coordinator for I*EARN and Bill Coppinger, I*EARN- Australia Coordinator. Kristin and Bill will join us via a video- telephone, a "low-tech" device which transmits a black/white still photograph over regular telephone lines.
Bill, how would you describe the change in learning that you have seen at Broadford as a result of telecommunications and I*EARN?
Kristin, in what way do you see I*EARN project work contributing to the broader I*EARN goal of building a global community.
Because this is a medium that encourages interactivity, does someone have a question or comment they would like to pose to Kristin or Bill?
From what I have seen of your conference agenda, you will experience some of the latest technologies available to educators. You will get a glimpse of what's possible today and a hint of what will be possible a year from now (after all, the WWW was not here a year ago!!). Five years into the future is yet unknown and will be defined by your creative imaginations. But, regardless of the technology (from the high technology of the WWW, video- conferencing through C-U-See-Me, or the latest version of Apple's Quicktime which makes any Macintosh with a dial-up 14.4 modem connection to the Internet able to transmit video and sound to the low technology of telephones, faxes, video-telephones, videotapes through the mail, learning will remain a function of the people who use it--those who make a community of shared vision and values.
As we speak there are tremendous forces at work to make the Internet a worldwide shopping center, particularly among those who control vast marketing financial resources. Already, most transnational corporations actively use this networking resource to sell financial services and commercial products. Try to do a search on the WWW through Yahoo or Webcrawler these days, and already you will be confronted by advertisements for commercial software or the latest American Express service. Voices from the educational community run the risk of being dwarfed by billboards shouting their advertisements on the information superhighway. Time is short for the educational community to use and demand that the Internet remain available for primary and secondary educational purposes at a cost that is affordable for them.
We hope you will join us as we build the I*EARN global community. You have incredibly rich and diverse cultures to share. You have the chance to join thousands of others in 25 countries who are breaking down isolation and building a community of people with the vision that education can be an effective means of preparing youth for the 21st century interdependent world in which they will live. These wonderful people around the world are struggling to build bridges, soar over barriers of language and cultural differences, and to help students see that they have the potential to learn well by doing good--that they can indeed make a difference in the world. They need you and your students in this struggle AND, they can be co-partners in a community with you as you create your exciting new society here in South Africa.
Thank you.
Edwin H. Gragert, I*EARN