If North Carolina expects to be a leader and not a distant follower,
then our education performance must improve.
Educational excellence is the basis for success in our higher educational institutions. As the rate of change increases in the industrial and business sectors of our national and state economy, the need for efficient and effective continuing and adult education programs increases proportionally.
Citizen education may be the most important component of an information highway. By providing access to geographically distributed information and instructional sources, an advanced communications infra-structure can enable fundamental improvements in formal educational systems and support new models of lifelong learning. This technology opens new communication channels between students and teachers, teachers and their peers, and schools and communities.The traditional teacher in a classroom approach has severe limitations when students are expected to compete in a world economy. This problem is especially difficult in rural areas where low population density, distance, and a limited tax base combine to create a situation where the best is limited to a general curriculum. Couple these problems with a teacher shortage in mathematics and science and the outcome is inevitable. A cost-effective and viable approach is to create "virtual classrooms" through telecommunications and data communications. North Carolina’s telecommunications infrastructure now enables students in remote rural areas to enjoy access to resources offered in urban areas. Students can experience "hands-on" learning by sharing information and participating in projects with their peers as well as experts, all across the state, country, and even the world.
One of the issues prompting national debate is equity in public schools funding. This basically is the idea that all citizens are not afforded the same opportunity because of how educational funds are raised and distributed. Although a recent court ruling stated that the North Carolina State Constitution provides for a public education not necessarily educational equity, improving educational equity is still a major goal.Our state assumes a much larger role in public education than most southern states. North Carolina raises the majority of revenue for public education, and through a series of fairly complicated formulas, appropriates funds to the school systems. However, many would add that there are two North Carolinas--an urban/suburban economy that is doing well, and a rural economy that is not doing so well--prompting a discussion on whether we as a state are providing all our students access to the same opportunity.
Generally, where there is a small student population with a small faculty, that school (or school system) can offer only a limited curriculum. There are simply not enough teachers or time slots available to offer the expanded curriculum. Additionally, smaller schools are located in more rural areas which traditionally have problems recruiting and keeping teachers. Math and science teaching positions in these smaller school systems frequently go unfilled. A number of factors--geographic, social, economic, and size--perpetuate this inequity of access.Physical walls no longer have to define a classroom. Two-way interactive video enables students in smaller schools to have "virtual proximity" to teachers and subjects in other school systems. Smaller groups of students can participate in a distance class and become integral members of that larger classroom.
A unique trial in North Carolina termed VISION CAROLINA was a two-year, public-private project that used fiber optics to link 16 sites--high schools, community colleges, universities, and a medical center--to demonstrate successful use of two-way interactive video.Academic literature confirms technology’s role in educational improvements: a review of 254 controlled studies concluded that computers in the classroom reduces the time needed to master certain types of knowledge by as much as 30%.
It is projected that by the year 2000, the majority of college students will be over 25 years old. People in that age bracket will want to take courses at their convenience. The virtual classroom will make courses available to the handicapped, workers on irregular shifts, frequent travelers, single parents, residents in isolated areas, or people who want to study in a highly specialized subject without moving closer to campus.Research is another post-secondary-level educational application for telecommunications. Institutions of higher learning must share research and computational resources dealing with high volumes of information that must be accessed and processed quickly.
The North Carolina University System recognizes that networked computing and information resources are critical to obtaining quality faculty and students, federal funding, and private grants. The passage of the High Performance
Computing and Communications Act of 1991 is a measurement of an appropriate information
infrastructure.
Clearly, technology is making a significant contribution in the classroom. However, the teacher is, and will continue to be, the primary facilitator of learning. Perhaps the greatest contribution that technology can make is in the area of instructional support for teachers. Effective teaching is the result of training and preparation, and technology can be a tremendous tool for teachers in and out of the classroom. It is important to make sure that technology serves the teacher, and not the reverse.
Outside the classroom, technology can contribute to the many tasks of teaching. In the classroom, technology can allow our teachers to interact with each other and share course and instructional approaches. This interaction with peers and students in remote locations is repeatedly cited by teachers as one of the genuine benefits of distance learning. The central goal of technology is quite simple: it must improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the educational process. |
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