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Chapter 1.9 | Go to Volume 2.preface Volume I - Chapter Ten(Last updated May 3, 2008) In Chinese following the bibliography A GLOBAL-SCALE `LAND-GRANT-TYPE’ VISION (NOW `FREE AIRSPACE')
A THESIS QUESTION: In a new learning age focusing on life quality and creativity shouldn't every person enjoy all the good qualities, respect and dignity of a true professional? Some garbage collectors wear white gloves and are called `sanitary engineers?' Shouldn't they be considered as part of the health care team? This respect requires learning experiences tailored to each unique individual and based on a profile of her/his gifts, talents, needs, problems, opportunities, etc. (3.3) Unfortunately in some situations teachers are losing professional status, and it must be provided for every qualified teacher in the world. Our fifth model that might stimulate online planners of a global virtual lifelong education system, or part of one, focuses on the training of professionals. Is there any profession where training cannot be improved, especially taking account of the potential of new technologies? Efforts to plan for a `global education system' must not be limited to the development distance education courses, but also must re-think various types of higher education institutions within that system. For example, Vartan Gregorian (2004) worried in print that "college has become chaotic maze' where students seek job skills. It is important to "reconstruct the unity and value of knowledge....so we have to re-evaluate our entire system of education." Is there any field of work that should not be professionalized; that is, emphasize service, excellence, high quality skills? So this chapter also has the aim of seeking to provide a quality of learning that can raise many other kinds of work to the quality status of `profession,’ as seen in that status, prestige and recognition given to their work. We suggest that more well-trained `professionals' are needed in every neighborhood of the world, and not just teachers and physicians. Major universities have highly successful systems of professional education, as in law and medicine. So like the original USA Land Grant institutions, this model’s focus is on indigenous professional quality expertise for the poorest areas of the globe. A need that begins from the bottom-up. A few critics suggest that the five models proposed to stimulate thinking here in Volume I, except for 1.7, are `too American’ or global lifelong learning planning. This may be true, but they are here to provoke reaction, discussion and reshaping by educators from other cultures. This is true of this fifth model that arises from a global consortium based on the “USA land grant university” idea that already has been helpfully extended to and adapted to India. This chapter’s model might be a consortium of all land-grant-type universities and of those departments of other educational institutions that train professionals. It might seek to prepare the skilled leaders and professionals needed in every neighborhood in the world. We also explore the idea that a global global lifelong learning system for professionalism would seek to bring more dignity, continually-updated expertise and professional certification to primary school teachers and to new kinds of work, and to jobs that have lacked that sort of recognition and certification. What, then might a global consortium of aird-space grant type advanced lifelong professional preparation aid the developing world? This needs to involve more partnership and collaboration between higher education and secondary schools of all kinds. President John R. Campbell (2000) has been persuasive when he documents the fact that perhaps nothing has transformed and empowered America more than the driving vision seen in
A global virtual consortium of `land-grant-type’ lifelong professional learning would need to define its vision in terms of the global community but also for the local community. So we suggest here for discussion that a new model could focus on such ideas as:
Speaking in India in 1999, Campbell reported the history of the American Land Grant system. In the early days of the American republic few people, as today in many areas of the developing world, had much education. Only the elite or the wealthy could attend college and, although the majority of Americans worked in agriculture, colleges had no courses in that and other such fields. The empowerment and enrichment of America was to a great extent made possible by the vision of Justin Smith Morrill whose 1862 Land-Grant Act established “low-cost, high-access higher education for the sons and daughters of the working class.” Consequently, Morrill was the leading architect of public higher education in the United States of America.” Asserting that educators must now similarly conceptualize and make provisions for everyone in all nations to have access to higher education, Campbell quoted Frank Graham: “for all human needs as deep as life and as wide as the world.” The term `Land-Grant University’ came from the gift of large tracts of vacant public land to help fund this higher education for the poor. Farmland was wealth in those days. What might be comparable today to help fund a world `land-grant’ university program? The `public lands’ of today are (1) the seabed that is more than 200 miles from any nation’s shore line, (2) Antarctica and (3) the moon and outer space. (4) Perhaps also global lifelong learning could share some of a `green tax’ on pollution—at least to help fund ecological research—and of a `Tobin’ tax on excessively frequent transfers of money from country to country. Those
earlier land-grant institutions “forged a covenant with the people to
provide equal access for all
to higher education,” thus creating a new social force in world
history. The
original legislation for the land-grant universities did not provide
for research. So later legislation helped fund research and also
extension personnel to distribute knowledge to farmers and others who
in return brought their problems and needs to researchers.
Thus, a unique characteristic of land-grant universities has
been a commitment to serve public need.
Campbell, in his address in India, reminded his audience of the
important role of American land grant universities and aid programs in
establishing the existing land-grant type universities in India. Now
could there be a global virtual `land-grant-type’ institution
strategy
for the developing world?
Unfortunately most of the first
land-grant universities in the USA began to copy the elite
universities--what Duderstadt (2000) called `Harvard-ization’ that
often resulted in a loss of the vision of free education for all. We
knew a student at a land grant university in the late 1930’s who
attended four undergraduate and three graduate years with $75 being
all the money he had from personal and family funds for those seven
years. This meant free
tuition and working for room, board, books and clothing. With
increasing global wealth and cheap powerful technology, can not
similar opportunities be made possible for all qualified people—wherever in the
world—who hitherto have not had the money for education.: Perhaps a new kind of `land grant' educational
institution can be built on a desert, a city devoted exclusively
to education, built around each of these kinds of higher education
institutions, and all kinds of research centers. China has taken a step
in that direction by building a new `city of universities." 1.10.1 A DRIVING MORAL VISION: A LEADERSHIP-CENTERED VIRTUAL LEARNING CONSORTIUM A new driving vision for a global virtual “land-grant’ model to be moral must serve the needs of everyone on the planet by providing needed high-quality professional leadership. We suggest also that it ought
Educators need to decide how a global electronic learning system can be enlarged and restructured to meet the needs of six (to ten?) billion people in an increasingly global society and then to train the professionals and develop the technology that best provides food, health care, housing, economic opportunity, human rights and reduced pollution of air, soil, and water. (See Volume II). A land-grant-type model of virtual global higher education should accept the UNESCO conference challenge that its efforts should be in keeping with Article 26.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As with the first American land grant universities--established to provide education for all--admission to global professional learning “should be based on the merit, capacity, efforts, perseverance and devotion” of all learners who wish to attend. “It should facilitate lifelong opportunities with due recognition of previously acquired skills” with no discrimination on grounds of race, gender, language or religion, or economic, cultural or social distinctions, with equality for indigenous peoples, cultural and linguistic minorities and the disadvantaged groups or peoples living under occupation. Professional learning must help facilitate “a seamless system starting with early childhood and continuing through life. Certainly, as UNESCO urged, a land-grant type virtual lifelong education system must work in active partnership with parents, schools, students, socio-economic groups and communities. It should promote innovation, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. World Watch magazine in 2001 announced that it was moving beyond just uncovering the dangers to humanity, to open a wider debate about kinds of political action required to enable change. Should preparation for every profession include training in responsible ethical and moral political action? Bill Joy has reported that Oppenheimer, as nuclear weapons were being developed, dared to challenge what many scientists were doing without looking at possible evil consequences. Joy too has asserted that most fundamental human problems are ethical and moral. (2.14, 2.16). He expressed his hope on `creative forces.’ Some of these, we suggest:
She urged widespread change with reward systems and incentives to be bold, visionary, or experimental. She called for education that honors difference, diversity, risk-taking, imagination, and social responsibility. Her book reviewer, Jonathan Glenn (1999,) said that her book is a reminder to those who will plan for the future of learning that “what we plan and how we plan matters, because human lives are at stake.” 1.10.2 1997 UNESCO WORLD DECLARATION ON HIGHER EDUCATION A philosophical and pedagogical foundation for some sort of global `land-grant’ model can be found in UNESCO’s vision for advanced and graduate education in the new century, including a great diversification and equitable access to new technologies, and “setting in motion a process of in-depth reform.” The UNESCO Conference on Higher Education (Paris, 1997) was called to promote the transformation of post-secondary institutions into lifelong learning institutions and to define their role in what is a fundamental pillar of human rights. So we report some UNESCO recommendations here as a foundation also for a land-grant virtual consortium's system. Now in the 21st century global open technologies open new doors for UNESCO. The substantial change and development of global electronic lifelong higher education, the enhancement of its quality and relevance, and the solution to the major challenges it faces, the UNESCO report said, require the strong involvement not only of governments and of higher education institutions, but also of all stakeholders, including students and their families, teachers, business and industry, the public and private sectors of the economy, parliaments, the media, the community, professional associations and society as well. This means that professional institutions must also be more accountable in the use of public and private, national or international resources, Emphasizing that learning systems should enhance the ability of learners to change, to bring about change, to address social needs and promote equity, the UNESCO declaration called for preserving and exercising scientific rigor and originality in a spirit of impartiality, as a basic prerequisite for attaining and sustaining an indispensable level of quality. Learners should be placed at the center of university concerns, within a lifelong perspective, so as to allow their full integration into the global knowledge society. (For our emphasis on professions in this model, note UNESCO Article 1, "Mission to educate, to train and to undertake research.") Also pertinent to this chapter’s focus on professional training, the conference declared that a primary mission of higher education must be to contribute to the sustainable development and improvement of society as a whole by
1.10.3 BUILDING LIFELONG EDUCATION SYSTEMS ON UNESCO STANDARDS Professional and leadership education programs, the UNESCO declaration said, should reinforce their role of service to society, especially its activities aimed at eliminating poverty, intolerance, violence, illiteracy, hunger, environmental degradation and disease. One of the needs of a new millennium—enlarging the concept of American land grant universities in the last century, is for higher education to “aim at the creation of a new society, non-violent and non-exploitative, consisting of highly cultivated, motivated and integrated individuals, inspired by love for humanity and guided by wisdom. As the first land-grant universities provided education in agriculture and engineering, this global virtual university model should seek to “strengthen co-operation with the world of work and analyze and anticipate societal needs.” It should bring more professional standards into business and “develop entrepreneurial skills and initiative in order to facilitate employability of graduates who will increasingly be called upon to be not only job seekers but also and above all to become job creators.” It should help learners to fully develop their own abilities with a sense of social responsibility, educating them to become well informed and deeply motivated citizens, who can think critically, analyze problems of society, look for solutions, apply them and accept social responsibilities. Therefore, to achieve professional goals, a land-grant-type virtual global lifelong system would need “to recast curricula, going beyond “cognitive mastery of disciplines. “New pedagogical and didactical approaches should be accessible and promoted in order to facilitate:
From Vision to Action. Human society, the UNESCO declaration said, needs dynamic leaders who can get things done and who can take a long-range, research oriented approach to global problems. We have noted here in volume II that scientists know how to feed and provide health care for the world, but their recommendations are not implemented by politicians or supported by the larger public. Higher quality professional training will require internships as well as new kinds of evaluation and methods of testing, not only powers of memory and comprehension, but skills for practical work and creativity. Perhaps higher professional standards can be required of all employees and personnel of a virtual learning system, not only those who teach, and do research, but those also who are responsible for technology, facilities, equipment, services to the community and the development of learning communities. (See 3.4). This would requite internal self-evaluation and external review, conducted openly by independent specialists with international expertise. UNESCO also proposed that independent national bodies should be established and comparative standards of quality, recognized at international level, should be defined. Due attention should be paid to specific institutional, national and regional contexts in order to take into account diversity and to avoid uniformity. All `stakeholders' should be an integral part of the institutional evaluation process. Quality also requires that a learning system should be characterized by its international dimension: exchange of knowledge, interactive networking, mobility of teachers and students, and international research projects, while taking into account the national cultural values and circumstances. UNESCO also pointed out that to attain and sustain national, regional or international quality, certain components are particularly relevant, notably careful selection of staff and continuous staff development, in particular through the promotion of appropriate programmes for academic staff development, including teaching/learning methodology and mobility between countries, between higher education institutions, and between higher education institutions and the world of work, as well as student mobility within and between countries. 1.10.4 SPECIAL ATTENTION TO DEVELOPING NATIONSPerhaps it is not only in developing countries that neighborhoods need to define and find the kinds of professionals they need; as for example many small American communities raise funds locally to secure a physician. The rapid breakthroughs in new information and communication provide new opportunities to provide needed professionals for every neighborhood in the world. This requires changing the way knowledge is developed and acquired and how local professionals are supported from outside. Those who have been deprived can be offered opportunities to innovate and have a wider access to higher learning for those based in rural neighborhoods. However, UNESCO declared, new information technology does not reduce the need for professionals. The roles of teachers change in relation to the learning process (3.6) and in the continuous dialogue that converts information into knowledge and understanding. Land-grant type institutions should "lead in drawing on the advantages and potential of new information and communication technologies, ensuring quality and maintaining high standards for education practices and outcomes in a spirit of openness, equity and international co-operation by: engaging in networks, technology transfer, capacity-building, facilities to complete virtual higher education institutions and systems, capable of bridging distances and developing high-quality systems of education, thus serving social and economic advancement and democratization as well as other relevant priorities of society, while ensuring that these virtual education facilities, based on regional, continental or global networks, function in a way that respects cultural and social identities." The UNESCO declaration also noted that in making full use of information and communication technology (ICT) for educational purposes, particular attention should be paid to removing the grave inequalities which exist among and also within the countries of the world with regard to access to new information and communication technologies and to the production of the corresponding resources; adapting ICT to national, regional and local needs and securing technical, educational, management and institutional systems to sustain it; facilitating, through international co‑operation, the identification of the objectives and interests of all countries, particularly the developing countries, equitable access and the strengthening of infrastructures in this field and the dissemination of such technology throughout society; closely following the evolution of the knowledge society; in order to ensure high quality and equitable regulations for access to prevail; taking the new possibilities created by the use of ICTs into account, while realizing that it is, above all, institutions of higher education that are using ICTs in order to modernize their work, and not ICTs transforming institutions of higher education from real to virtual institutions. Professional quality leadership is thus a major social responsibility and can be significantly strengthened through dialogue with all stakeholders, especially teachers and students, in higher education. The participation of teaching faculty in the governing bodies of higher education institutions should be taken into account, within the framework of current institutional arrangements, bearing in mind the need to keep the size of these bodies within reasonable bounds. . The practice of multilingualism, faculty and student exchange programmes and institutional linkage to promote intellectual and scientific cooperation should be an integral part of all higher education systems. The principles of international co-operation based on solidarity, recognition and mutual support, true partnership that equitably serves the interests of the partners and the value of sharing knowledge and know-how across borders should govern relationships among higher education institutions in both developed and developing countries and should benefit the least developed countries in particular. Consideration should be given to the need for safeguarding higher education institutional capacities in regions suffering from conflict or natural disasters. Consequently, an international dimension should permeate the curriculum, and the teaching and learning processes. Regional and international normative instruments for the recognition of studies should be ratified and implemented, including certification of the skills, competences and abilities of graduates, making it easier for students to change courses, in order to facilitate mobility within and between national systems. Brain Drain. (See medicine below.) A major concern of the 1997 UNESCO conference was how to change `brain drain’—so many developing world scientists and scholars moving to Europe or America—to `brain gain ‘ To stem the professional brain drain, which deprives developing countries, and those in transition, UNESCO advocated international cooperation schemes. 1.10.5 SOME PROFESSIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS UNESCO (although many at UNESCO have not agreed) is probably the logical location for an effort to design and simulate a model or models for global virtual higher education to provide a larger generation of indigenous professionals for the poorest areas of the world. The design for a land grant type model might begin by mapping and seeking to involve all of the national and global professional associations and organizations. Most of them already give thought to bringing more excellence into their areas of work. Discussion of this `land grant’ model began with the assumption that more kinds of work need professional standards and preparation, and that professional preparation can everywhere be improved; and especially in the poorest areas of developing countries. We propose in concluding this chapter to illustrate with upgrading the profession of teachers, but first note a few other professions as well. Each might suggest some ideas for educating needed professionals online in the developing world. The model might seek to enlarge international teamwork within and among various professions as they focus on basic human needs. (Grantham (2000) proposed that emerging new technologies will make it possible for individuals to for new communities at work, collaborative work space where people voluntarily find each other based on work or research interests. Engineering schools are beginning to internationalize, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported October 12, 2001. For instance, eight engineering schools in the USA and Europe had set up a graduate degree program in “global engineering.’ Each of the schools—part of the Network for Higher Education in Engineering—was to specialize in a particular engineering discipline, making it possible for students to get credit for experience in different countries. In other developments, graduate students and faculty in developing world engineering schools with limited resources can enrich the curriculum via distance education. However, what Williams of MIT (2003) has said about "Education for the Profession formerly known as Engineering" is suggestive for other professions as well. Elsewhere here we report on `barefoot engineers' to serve impoverished villages. Engineering, Williams has said, is undergoing an identity crisis" that involves interdisciplinary projects. Most engineering departments are becoming "departments of applied-information technology...as technology dissolves the familiar boundaries of engineering." Civil engineers, for example, do do not design structures but software systems to manage construction. Students are increasingly aware that they need to know how society works, for example, so designing a new kind of curriculum is "is the most difficult problem in engineering today." Also serious questions were raised at the turn of the century about USA engineering students being adequately prepared for the USA to be competitive in the world of tomorrow. See: <http://www.distance-educator.com/dnews/Article11237.phtml> Williams has said that "the convergence of engineering and liberal-arts education is a deep, long term and irreversible trend because "students need to be prepared for life in a world where technological, scientific, humanistic and social issues are all mixed together.". Medicine and Health Care. The quality and methods for training of physicians and nurses is often pointed to as a model for upgrading the training of teachers and other professions. Yet even minimum health care is not provided for everyone in the world. Organizations like `Doctors Without Borders’ and missionary hospitals funded by churches, however commendable they may be in providing some health care for the poor, are just `Band-Aids’ on a totally inadequate global health care system. In one Southeast Asian country, a major university proposed a plan to provide better health care in the poorest rural neighborhoods, an adaptation of the `barefoot doctors’ in some other countries. Graduates of existing medical and nursing schools rarely went to needy rural areas; indeed the country was exporting doctors and nurses to other countries instead. So one university proposed to establish a new kind of medical school. It would provide health care training for local people –such as wives who were going to stay in the community—often those who actually were providing the `barefoot doctor,' midwife and/or other such services. See: <http://www.isi.edu/isd/ADE/ade.html> Such local paraprofessionals could be trained enough to know what they were qualified to do, such as clean and bandage wounds, and when to use tele-medicine technology to consult with a doctor at a hospital, and how to summon a helicopter to take a patient to a distant hospital. Such a school for rural paraprofessionals could also provide rural medical centers with trained nurses and medical supplies. Pilot projects in various countries--including areas of the United States where there are no resident physicians--demonstrated the feasibility of the idea. But in Southeast Asia major medical schools vetoed the idea, confidentially admitting that pride in their profession—and their wish to have only internationally recognized standards caused them to prefer no medical care at all in poverty areas until the highest quality could be provided. Yet it is now theoretically possible to use technology to bring health care to nearly everyone in the world in a model that recognizes and continually provides education to a paraprofessional within reach of every individual. In a plan to provide superior medical education, fifty schools in sixteen countries are creating a virtual online medical school to "allow students around the world to pursue a medical education through a combination of computer-based learning and clinical experience in local health facilities." (Mangan 2002). One purpose of the project is to reverse the `brain drain.' of students in developing countries. Like students in traditional programs, students in virtual medical education would spend the first two years in intensive study of basic sciences. Then the plan is for each to spend two or three yhears clinical settings. Real cases can be played out by simulated patients whose responses are programmed into a computer. Even a patient's heartbeat can be hear through the computer mouse. not only can high quality learning be provided, but "students will be able to tap into the expertise of faculty members around the world, and to customize their education" to suit their individual needs and interests." (See 2.9). Business. Developing world rural communities need entrepreneurs. A first major effort of international distance education has been to provide professional training for business people and it has been hoped that better business and entrepreneurial training might be providing to large numbers of people in the developing world as a way to improve the entire global economy. Borchard (2000) pointed to a major careers change as individuals “are responsible for maintaining their employability in a constantly changing workplace” in our knowledge based society.” Continuing career counseling becomes very important. The working agreements between several universities and business corporations call for yearly written assessments of university curriculum programs, with the expectation that this may become a model for other such cooperative agreements. At the same time, Mangan (2001) reported that the expected large demand for online MBA degrees has been found to be much smaller than expected. Questions are also being raising about the usefulness of many existing business courses and programs in other cultures. As many universities began to develop online MBA programs it had been expected that the Internet was going to revolutionize business education.” Perhaps this will not help the developing world until more attention is given to what is needed in specific poverty communities. There are experiments with specialization; for example an MBA program for the staff of sports organizations. In 2.11. we discuss the need for the kind of entrepreneurial skills need in rural and urban poverty neighborhoods so that more income can be produced locally. Schmidt (2001) reported that an August 2001 meeting of higher education officers discussed failure of public colleges to meet the need of employers and of all those needing income. Religion. Human Society and university scholars have become more concerned about conflict between major world religions since September 11, 2001. Efforts of organizations like the Parliament of World Religions to deal with conflicts between and among religions have moved higher on the agenda of academia; for example, research on ways to get religious organizations to collaborate in helping solve major world problems. For example, the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago has sought to “test research through interdisciplinary discussion that incorporates the work of theologians, ethicists, literary scholars, social scientists and historians (and) citizens and professionals who represent other fields of endeavor that intersect the academic study of religion. Advanced Ph.D. students in religion are being asked to step back from their specialized research to ask themselves how that research will contribute to crucial issues. (See 2.16) Rosengarten (2001) reported research on results of the failure to include religious tradition in various studies, “that political philosophy, for example, is impoverished if it does not include the thought of major theologians who emphasize compassion, hope, justice and other values. Can such a challenge confront every person prepared for professional leadership in any religion? There has been some discussion in Asia of a consortium of schools that train religious leaders. (See 2.14 and 2.16. Law. What kind of professional legal help is needed in the poverty neighborhoods of the developing world? Western-style lawyers often drive taxicabs and wait on tables in some developing countries. In Germany a new private law school challenges the conservative university law schools that focus on helping students to pass bar exams with an innovative curriculum that begins to prepare students to practice international law. Elsewhere there are efforts to move away from high profit orientation to a style of law that seeks to serve the poor through out of courts mediation and counseling centers. Meanwhile Stephens (2001) describes uses of new technologies to improve judicial proceedings. In some demonstrations students in the USA, the UK and Australia participate in mock international trials using high-speed videoconferencing, automatic speech transcription, automated language interpretation, photo-realistic animations and a 360-degree dome camera that records and broadcasts all courtroom activities. <http://courtroom21.net>. More important, perhaps,is the online provision for the developing world of legal education for people who cannot afford or do not have access to attorneys. Sarat (2004) has pointed to the value of law courses for people `throughout the world' who must deal with conflict. People wo are not lawyers also need to understand law and "see the complex of law, culture and society in all of their variety." On a new learning technology see `Weblogs at Harvard Law' (Downes 2004). There have been experiment with `barefoot' lawyers in slums. Agriculture was a. primary first concern of Land Grant universities, and now a new professionalism is emerging in large-scale farm work. For example, Carnevale (2001) discussed the use of distance education and satellite technology in bringing a new quality of expertise and professionalism to agriculture. A tractor, for example, can be “linked to a computer that receives signals from Global Positioning System satellites” to determine how much seed and fertilizer to use on each acre, and where none would help. Later such information can be used to “create a map detailing yields in given areas.” Now whole world could be mapped to help bring such ecology-sensitive professionalism to agriculture everywhere in the world as well as help increase incomes in the poorest areas of the world. See doctorate program: <http://doc-at-a-distance.tamu.edu/overview.html>. Education. We conclude this volume by asking what might happen to facilitate better transformation of the world’s educational system if all teacher training schools in the world were collaborating online together, sharing resources and ideas, developing larger-scale research on technology empowered learning environments and tools.? Ironically, less well-educated teachers in some poor countries have more `professional status’ than highly trained teachers in America, where a century ago the compensation for teachers was comparable to that of doctors. Does the development of medical science suggest the need for `teaching science,’ –comprehensive research (for example into how the brain works and the different ways people learn). (See 1.8.4 and 1.8.5) A huge volume of uncoordinated and undigested information about successes and failures in education exists all over the planet. As the NVO (1.8) proposes to put online all that is known about the universe, coordinating vast quantities of data, a similar major research program is needed in education. Bork (2001a) proposes (see 3.9, 3.1, 3.2) “large-scale extensive major experiments” to implement essential changes, and a new paradigm, to make adequate education available to everyone in the world. The research, design and development will be expensive, but is absolutely essential, “requiring international management, funding and cooperation. It would be a `Manhattan Project” in scope, “designed to rescue learning in the world.” `Teacher training schools need to be reshaped with the quality of medical schools to prepare to use new technologies that will arise in the new millennium; for example, technology that now can make it possible education that can be adapted to every individual and every neighborhood on a lifetime basis. This possible new approach, Bork says, “little used as yet, has the strong potential to bring learning to far more people in the world, at lower costs for a student hour of learning,” and education for people of all ages when it is needed—as in health care. We will give more attention in volume III to these possibilities, outlined by Bork and Sigrun Gunndersdottir. (2001b). Crucial will be the development of highly interactive e-text books and other electronic materials. Then educators, Bork says, can accomplish what is crucial: ”We can reach everyone on earth, using native languages with all learners, and needed education can be available for all ages, including adult education. Attention can be given to the individual problems of learners, their “unique capabilities, learning styles, and problems.” (3.3) +++ 1.10.6 WHERE NEXT IN VOLUMES II AND III? This first volume has sought to ask questions about the future of lifelong education, and how to provide essential learning to everyone on the planet. It is too early to be sure what the answers to the most important questions may be, so this book lists questions and cites some scholars who are seeking answers Since this is just the first of three volumes, it leaves many important questions not yet asked, and we cannot yet even be sure what the most important questions are going to be! However, we conclude volume I by listing some of the questions that will be asked by the second two volumes, now being drafted and regularly updated in English. Volume Two – Future of Global-Scale Research Volume II is on the future of research, not just the future of what researchers are now doing, but asks how research itself may be transformed by forthcoming powerful new technologies. Indeed, present research is already being enlarged and transformed by technologies like the new super computer for biology and chemistry. Our Volume II, however, asks questions about much larger research projects that that will be `problem centered, even crisis centered’ and greatly empowered by networking. We will ask: is it essential that there must be drastic change and enlargement of research, more projects for example on the scale of outer space exploration and the Human Genome project? How can the explosion of knowledge be managed and organized? Won’t a most essential area of research be a quest for the technology that will cross-index and coordinate all the world’s knowledge? At present there is slow progress in some crucial areas, such as a cure for AIDS or bird influenza, because some scientists will not share their findings, step by step with others, hoping to keep it a secret in the hope of winning a Nobel prize. Will scientists be more willing to share their research at each stage if there is a way to tag each minor new development with the name or names of the finder, so that credit goes to the first to report a step in discovery? In this context we will ask more questions about `world brain’ and `world brain’ issues—and the Cosmopedia linking all reference books— already mentioned in this Volume I.? It is crucial that all scholars be networked at first to everyone else on the planet that is working in the same field. How can this crucial networking be accomplished and well managed to serve every researcher? If a first step in networking of all working on the same project, won’t it also be crucial to network each scholar’s work with all other fields of research to find possible overlapping or challenges that come from another discipline? How can a planetary technology coordination system be funded and managed so as to serve all scholars and all research projects? Next what are crucial areas for `mega-research—huge projects that bring together all possible resources to deal with crises and other issues crucial to all human beings, and to the health of our planet itself? There are questions about co-laboratories that can bring together scholars and scientists from every country, and how best to enlarge and make more effective the technologies involved in simulations, in database automation and coordination of technologies? At a 2005 conference attended by scientists from all five continents, there was concern for talent-- even genius--that is not being discovered and educated. For example, perhaps the `Einstein’ who will solve the mysteries of human consciousness is already born. But perhaps she is born in a county where girls do not get to go to school. Or perhaps she is born to a family that does not have adequate nutrition for her brain to develop properly, or into a community that does not have safe drinking water so that she is sick so much of the time that she cannot do good schoolwork. So it is not enough to provide everyone with educational opportunities without also providing adequate nutrition and health. That is why we ask questions about `mega-research,’ global-scale research projects so large that they deal with all inter-related problems. Such projects will require `collective intelligence’ that will bring together thousands, even perhaps millions of minds, and won’t this require new kinds of massive technology such as `artificial intelligence’ for human-machine cooperation of a kind hardly yet imaginable. Why is that important for research to solve human crises, beginning with the twenty that J. F. Rischard of the World Bank says must be solved within twenty years? Our greatest contemporary crisis may be war, the many uses of terrible weapons that wreck havoc on women, children and civilians. What scale of global research can find effective alternatives, peace games to play out options, negotiation strategies and ideas not yet conceived? Don’t we need a term like `mega-research’ since a human problem like war will require solving many other human crises at the same time? As the global population increases, there might be wars over water, oil and energy, food, and so forth. So Volume II will ask what scale of research, and tools to empower research, will be necessary for a planetary food management system? What kind of larger-scale research is needed for that? Won’t it require replacing gifts of food from other countries with new agricultural skills to help most of the hungry grow and process much of their own food? But hunger is also a political and government problem and much of current hunger is caused by war and disease. What kinds of research will make it possible to provide preventive health care and medical treatment for everyone on the planet that is efficient and cost effective? What are the possibilities of tele-medicine, expanding the Chinese `barefoot doctor’ concept to all neighborhoods without adequate health care; as is already beginning to happen when poor communities get networked to hospitals and medical schools; Japanese doctors using the Internet to provide health care in rural Mongolia, for example; and when a surgeon in New Zealand, without leaving his country, performs surgery on a patient in Eastern Europe. Already vast amounts of medical information are available on the Internet and nurses and midwives receive instruction via distance education from television and videodisks. What next is needed? Much illness and many other crises are coming as a result of polluted air, water and soil. How can mega-research help plan and develop a `planetary environmental strategy and system? Orbiting earth satellite photography is already opening windows onto new kinds of agricultural and environmental information and planning. What kinds of databases, global networking and computer modeling can help design a new planetary ecology system? How can water and other resources be recycled and used again? How can networking bring planners--and essential politicians-- from all countries together in a design process? A crucial factor that is going to make such large-scale research and planning essential is not only the increase in population, but also the fact that soon half of the world’s population will be living in cities, and many in slum suburbs without adequate water, sewage, housing and income? Some scholars argue that there is not an over-population problem, but in any case large-scale urban redesign is essential to make cities a decent place to live, perhaps especially for children. Many urban people need gardening programs to raise some of their own food., and how can `green’ buildings be developed with gardens on the roof? What kind of mega-research can produce and enlarge `a global urban observatory’ to bring all kinds of data together for comprehensive, holistic urban planning, that also takes account of the rural farming areas around cities? Must women play a central role in making urban centers healthier and happier places for families and children? Will women have to mobilize to accomplish needed goals? What kind and scale or research will be essential to provide a basic minimum income for everyone on the planet, so that all can afford health care, education, adequate food and housing? Already there are many piece-meal plans for reducing poverty but efforts are generally unsuccessful because of graft, competition between plans and agencies, and the lack of a plan to reconstruct all of global society’s neighborhoods and villages. Can mega-research, dealing with all the problems at once, make possible some entirely new ideas and institutions? For example, would those political systems that sought to provide jobs for everyone been more successful if they had tried to rebuild human society and institutions from the bottom up, instead of imposing solutions from the top down? Can mega-research develop plans that are more scientifically based and that give power and initiative to local people? Can mega-research, dealing with all the problems at once, make possible a `global human society management system? Humanity faces a global crime crisis, that limits human progress more than most people realize? Can global-scale meta-research discover how law enforcement and other officials can tackle problems that no one country seems able to cope with alone? For example, such problems as piracy, organized crime funded by huge illegal drug profits, political graft, terrorism attacks of innocent people, mass rape of women and children, cutting off arms of children to punish parents, and more. Can large-scale research design an effective global court, arbitration and negotiation system to replace the use of violence as a means of settling disputes? But isn’t that going to require a new system of global governance? It seems impossible to reform and recreate the United Nations into an adequate system of global governance, but surprise! Networking is developing alternate forms of supplemental and supportive governance at local, regional, national and global levels. Mayors in many countries are online with other mayors, legislators with legislators, along with educators and others who plan together. Perhaps this is where the European Union can become a networking laboratory for the rest of the world. But where is the mega-research project to study and evaluate all such experiments with networking. (Many working experiments in America, however primitive, are reported on http://www.govtech.net.) Could mega-research in the humanities discover how more effectively to enlarge the morals and ethics of everyone on the planet? Corruption seems to be rampant in all areas of human society. And more than morals and ethics are needed? Will it take large-scale research to find how best to deal with evil that seems to exist in every culture and individuals (not just in Hitlers who spell out lies to bewitch the masses)? Can large-scale research discover how better to nurture caring, compassion, as well as integrity, responsibility and honesty…and inspiration and motivation to get all citizens to act in support of significant projects to solve basic human crises? Now, having suggested some major questions for Volume II on possible futures for research in light of forthcoming more powerful technologies, we come to the need for mega-research on education and job-training for everyone on the planet. New and enlarging research into the brain and mind, for example, suggest that we are only at a primitive level in discovering what humanity needs to know about the uniqueness of each person and the impacts of so many different cultures; and how to avoid a new kind of global colonialism that seeks to use new technologies to impose uniform styles of learning. So we turn in Volume II to questions and research on better learning and education that is essential for the solving of each of the crises discussed above, and maybe 26,000 other minor crises. What other and new questions, hopefully better ones, will come to mind as we reflect on such untested questions? VOLUME THREE – Future Learning and Teaching. We have the opportunity now to learn much more about individual learners, about each teacher, about the brain and how we learn, about how to increase human intelligence, and about new kinds of aids and resources that can transform education. For all of their emphasis on research, universities have been reluctant to investigate their own educational activities with the rigor they focus on other research. Students are going to have more control over the learning process. Their focus will be on getting skills and competency, not on competing with other students for grades Kevin Kelly, in the September 2005 issue of Wired magazine, wrote about the future of networking and related powerful technologies that are likely to transform all human institutions, including schools and other learning opportunities. What different is going to be possible for and required of learners of all ages in a profoundly different future? Won’t education planners need the help of tool-designers with a larger technological imagination? Rather that trying to adapt technology created for other purposes, won’t education need mega-research to find what is essential and to create new kinds of technology to accomplish new goals? Technologies such as networking, broadband Internet, satellite technology, the coming together of many kinds of technology into hand-held tools are already pointing the way into what is likely to be an astonishing future. But how and by whom is it to be planned so that it is adequate to serve everyone in the world? And so that humanity does not fall into the trap of a mess of uncoordinated technologies? What kinds of more comprehensive research and redesign might best guide the development of a global 'education for all in virtual space/cyberspace’ master plan which might transcend and expand the vision of all the political and education leaders of all nations? It is crucial that educators--even the experts--admit their profound ignorance, their need for larger-scale experimentation and research. How can everyone be given a passion for lifelong learning? What kind of mega-research is needed? First, what do we need to know about the problems of each learner and how special programs can be created to help those who, for example, have poor eyesight or hearing, who find it hard to read, who live far from schools that teach what she needs to know, who have no money, and so forth? More important how can a `profile’ be created for each individual learner, bringing together all medical, educational and other records and test data, to serve as the basis for designed a special learning program for each unique individual? What helpful can be learned through life-mapping, tests to discover which of eight or so different intelligences an individual may have? How can classroom teaching be improved, whether students are 20 feet away from an instructor or 2000 miles away? Already there are successful experiments with `smart classrooms' that make possible more active classroom participation, even in large classes. There can be technologies that record and enhance classroom lectures—improving such as current iPods,-- those that that enable web-based videoconferencing, and student response systems like a TV remote, and student empowerment research has just begun. Forthcoming research can make it possible for virtual reality to transport the student back to any time in history or to any place in the present. Can thousands of interlinked supercomputers with more intelligence than the human brain transform every campus –-or one global virtual campus—into an intelligent, thinking, living electronic environment that can empower every learner, anywhere, anytime? Next can we have tele-immersion and telepresence with a learner’s room, whether at home or on campus, having walls that are windows on the world? Can a virtual reality (simulated) classroom enable a kind of education that more effectively uses all three ways in which people learn: the intellectual, the emotional (including art and imaging), and the kinesthetic (physical movement? With a focus is on the brain/mind, can we anticipate research to enhance intelligence, creativity, memory and imagination for the individual and also the collective intelligence and imagination of groups? Also it is suggested that the `’I.Q. of organizations’’ can also be enhanced? Isn’t humanity also suffering from a failure to find and develop genius among the illiterate and poorly educated of the developing world…and elsewhere, especially among developing world females who have special talents and gifts that have not been recognized and developed? And what about `a master plan’ for knowledge as an alternative to technology systems that “interpret and digest for us, giving us bits and pieces…too small to see the bigger pictures and explore hidden connections and dimensions?.” Can knowledge maps embody and outline what is known and unknown and enable knowledge scaffolding and architectures? Learning in our time has focused on literacy as learning to read print. What about other literacies, such as the aural and visual? Soon we can preserve electronically our entire memory, for all persons to have an accessible electronic record of everything they have learned, organized around their own interests, goals, professional plans and can carry an entire library around in a pocket. Everyone can have a personal `Knowledge Construct’ (KC) to help organize and cross index all class notes, personal essays and research papers, reading notes, ideas, lectures, journals. Learners can then at any time trace the roots and beginning of ideas that are important to them as well as the ideas and experiences that later led to vocational and other major decisions. Why are so many of the current generation of students bored and restless? Is it at least in part caused by frequent neglect of new learning styles and tools? For example, perhaps too little attention is as yet being given to impact of computer and video games on the way the younger generation thinks and learns? Virtual learning environments offer many advantages and a potential for reaching, motivating, and fully involving learners." One that constitutes "the most interactive multimedia resource available. How can we learn much more about individual instructors, their talents and unique abilities? And how different are learning and teaching going to be? Teachers already are different from each other, with varied styles and roles. With forthcoming electronic tools won’t they all be able to do a better job. In part the change will result from the awareness that instructors in nearly every field can no long know all they need to know. Like physicians now, they will need electronic aids—like a more intelligent Internet and specialized software—to keep up with new research data and information in their field. Brilliant lecturers and master teachers with excellent classroom skills will continue to be important, but we may be entering a time when very few teachers, of any age level, are going to be competent in the sense that was true in the past. Some teachers can be `stars,’ as in entertainment and professional sports. But few of the rest--without technological help--are going to be able to cope with the knowledge explosion. Isn’t going to be increasingly difficult—alone--to master even one discipline for one age group?. The president of Microsoft said in the summer of 2005 that one of the three most important new technologies for transforming education will be the electronic textbook. Textbooks have long been crucial to education because they organize information and make it convenient and manageable for learners. The traditional textbook, however, is not only too expensive for the world's poor--who desperately need better learning--but it is hard to update. New information is being added to human knowledge so rapidly that a textbook may be out of date by the time it appears in print. Clearly, traditional printed textbooks alone will not be adequate to meet the world's education needs. Fortunately, powerful new technologies can greatly overcome those limitations. Online electronic textbooks can bring together print, video, sound, film and graphics with a variety of delivery media and can be regularly updated. Beyond that, the online textbook, with web connections to all knowledge, can become the center of an ELTIS (Electronic Learning Tutoring Instrument and System) that can automatically make essential learning available to everyone in the world? What is the potential of the experimental online automated tutor, adapted to each individual and language that can be built into an online electronic textbook? Can one include automated counseling, and be translatable into a hundred languages? In 2005 it is estimated that there are over 100,000 online courses available via the Internet. Who is going to redesign, repackage and select courses to recommend, for example, to those who use a neighborhood learning center (school) in the developing world? Is there just to be an `international supermarket’ of courses, with the individual learning obliged to choose which to use without adequate evaluation information? Will learners themselves be involved in course creation, at least by providing feedback during experimental and later `editions' of online learning modules? The University of Virginia announced that it would in time “let students create their own personalized curricula,” subject to approval. Can we add the `Fantasy Amplifier - imagination stimulator’ as well as new technologies not yet imagined? It is hope that by asking these kinds of questions along will some reports of experiments, Volumes II and III where will cause many more new questions to arise. For global education now needs better questions before it can consider answers and solutions. Who, a hundred years ago, could imagine what the 20th century would bring? We need to remember that information technology is still in its infancy, but is rapidly moving into adolescence. How soon, for instance, will learning be changed by wearable information technology such as computerized eye glasses and `learningware' that enables young teenagers to tackle huge problems that could never before be resolved. Note introduction to next 2 volumes below after bibliography: Return to Chapter 1.9 | Go to Volume II Preface
“Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium.” 2001. The Decadal Report of the National Academy of Sciences. Borchard, David. 2000. “The Future High-Tech Career Center.” Futurist, May-June. Bork, Albert. 2001a. “Adult Education, Lifelong Learning and the Future. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~bork Bork, Alfred and Sigrun Gunnersdottir. 2001b) Tutorial Distance Learning – Rebuilding Our Educationl Systems. New York: Kluwer. Campbell, John R. 199?. Reclaiming A Lost Heritage: Land-Grant and Other Higher Education Initiatives for the 21st Century. Michigan State University Press. Campbell, John R.. 1999. “Land Grant Model for Agricultural Universities," address at the International Symposium on Agricultural Education, New Delhi Campbell, John R... 2000. Dry Rot in the Ivory Tower. University Press of America. Carnevale, Dan. 2001. “A Distance-Education Student Puts His Lessons to Work on a Farm.” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 1. Downes, Stephen. 2004. "Educational Blogging." Educause, Sep/.'Oc. Glenn, Jonathan for The Society for College and University Planning. <http://www.scup.org> Graptham, Charles. 2000. The Future of Work: The Promise of the New Digital Work Society. New York: McGraw-Hill. Gregorian, Vartan. 2004, "Colleges Must Reconstruct the Unity of Knowledge." Chronicle of Higher Education, June 4/i= Kolodny, Annette. 1998. Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty‑First Century. Duke University Press Lenn, Marjorie Peace. 2002. "The Right Way to Export Higher Education." Chronicle of Higher Education, March 1. Mangan, Katherine. 2001. “Expectations Evaporate for Online MBA Programs.” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5. Mangan, Katherine 2002. "Colleges in 1 Countries Work to Create a Virtual Medical School." Chronicle of Higher Education, November 2. Neave, Guy. 1998. “Four Pillars of Wisdom.” UNESCO Courier. September. Rhodes, Frank H. T. 2001. The Creation of the Future: The Role of the American University. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Sarat, Austin. 2004. 'Legal Scholarship in the Liberal Arts." Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 3. Schmidt, Peter. 2001. “Work Force Concerns.” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 10. UNESCO: <http://www.education.unesco.org/educprog/wche/presentation.htm> Williams, Rosalind. 2003. "Education for the Profession Formerly Known as Engineering." Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 22. +++ This book
has sought to ask questions about the future of lifelong education,
and how to provide essential learning to everyone on the planet. It
is too early to be sure what the answers to the most important
questions may be, so this book lists questions and cites some
scholars who are seeking answers. VOLUME TWO – Future of Global-Scale Research
Volume II is on the future of research,
not just the future of what researchers are now doing, but asks how
research itself may be transformed by forthcoming powerful new
technologies. Indeed, present research is already being enlarged and
transformed by technologies like the new super computer for biology
and chemistry. Our Volume II, however, asks questions about much
larger research projects that that will be `problem centered, even
crisis centered’ and greatly empowered by networking. It is crucial that all scholars be networked at first to everyone else on the planet that is working in the same field. How can this crucial networking be accomplished and well managed to serve every researcher? If a first step in networking of all working on the same project, won’t it also be crucial to network each scholar’s work with all other fields of research to find possible overlapping or challenges that come from another discipline? How can a planetary technology coordination system be funded and managed so as to serve all scholars and all research projects? Next what are crucial areas for `mega-research—huge projects that bring together all possible resources to deal with crises and other issues crucial to all human beings, and to the health of our planet itself? There are questions about co-laboratories that can bring together scholars and scientists from every country, and how best to enlarge and make more effective the technologies involved in simulations, in database automation and coordination of technologies? At a 2005 conference attended by scientists from all five continents, there was concern for talent-- even genius--that is not being discovered and educated. For example, perhaps the `Einstein’ who will solve the mysteries of human consciousness is already born. But perhaps she is born in a county where girls do not get to go to school. Or perhaps she is born to a family that does not have adequate nutrition for her brain to develop properly, or into a community that does not have safe drinking water so that she is sick so much of the time that she cannot do good schoolwork. So it is not enough to provide everyone with educational opportunities without also providing adequate nutrition and health. That is why we ask questions about `mega-research,’ global-scale research projects so large that they deal with all inter-related problems. Such projects will require `collective intelligence’ that will bring together thousands, even perhaps millions of minds, and won’t this require new kinds of massive technology such as `artificial intelligence’ for human-machine cooperation of a kind hardly yet imaginable. Why is that important for research to solve human crises, beginning with the twenty that J. F. Rischard of the World Bank says must be solved within twenty years? Our greatest contemporary crisis may be war, the many uses of terrible weapons that wreck havoc on women, children and civilians. What scale of global research can find effective alternatives, peace games to play out options, negotiation strategies and ideas not yet conceived? Don’t we need a term like `mega-research’ since a human problem like war will require solving many other human crises at the same time? As the global population increases, there might be wars over water, oil and energy, food, and so forth. So Volume II will ask what scale of research, and tools to empower research, will be necessary for a planetary food management system? What kind of larger-scale research is needed for that? Won’t it require replacing gifts of food from other countries with new agricultural skills to help most of the hungry grow and process much of their own food? But hunger is also a political and government problem and much of current hunger is caused by war and disease. What kinds of research will make it possible to provide preventive health care and medical treatment for everyone on the planet that is efficient and cost effective? What are the possibilities of tele-medicine, expanding the Chinese `barefoot doctor’ concept to all neighborhoods without adequate health care; as is already beginning to happen when poor communities get networked to hospitals and medical schools; Japanese doctors using the Internet to provide health care in rural Mongolia, for example; and when a surgeon in New Zealand, without leaving his country, performs surgery on a patient in Eastern Europe. Already vast amounts of medical information are available on the Internet and nurses and midwives receive instruction via distance education from television and videodisks. What next is needed? Much illness and many other crises are coming as a result of polluted air, water and soil. How can mega-research help plan and develop a `planetary environmental strategy and system? Orbiting earth satellite photography is already opening windows onto new kinds of agricultural and environmental information and planning. What kinds of databases, global networking and computer modeling can help design a new planetary ecology system? How can water and other resources be recycled and used again? How can networking bring planners--and essential politicians-- from all countries together in a design process? A crucial factor that is going to make such large-scale research and planning essential is not only the increase in population, but also the fact that soon half of the world’s population will be living in cities, and many in slum suburbs without adequate water, sewage, housing and income? Some scholars argue that there is not an over-population problem, but in any case large-scale urban redesign is essential to make cities a decent place to live, perhaps especially for children. Many urban people need gardening programs to raise some of their own food., and how can `green’ buildings be developed with gardens on the roof? What kind of mega-research can produce and enlarge `a global urban observatory’ to bring all kinds of data together for comprehensive, holistic urban planning, that also takes account of the rural farming areas around cities? Must women play a central role in making urban centers healthier and happier places for families and children? Will women have to mobilize to accomplish needed goals? What kind and scale or research will be essential to provide a basic minimum income for everyone on the planet, so that all can afford health care, education, adequate food and housing? Already there are many piece-meal plans for reducing poverty but efforts are generally unsuccessful because of graft, competition between plans and agencies, and the lack of a plan to reconstruct all of global society’s neighborhoods and villages. Can mega-research, dealing with all the problems at once, make possible some entirely new ideas and institutions? For example, would those political systems that sought to provide jobs for everyone been more successful if they had tried to rebuild human society and institutions from the bottom up, instead of imposing solutions from the top down? Can mega-research develop plans that are more scientifically based and that give power and initiative to local people? Can mega-research, dealing with all the problems at once, make possible a `global human society management system? Humanity faces a global crime crisis, that limits human progress more than most people realize? Can global-scale meta-research discover how law enforcement and other officials can tackle problems that no one country seems able to cope with alone? For example, such problems as piracy, organized crime funded by huge illegal drug profits, political graft, terrorism attacks of innocent people, mass rape of women and children, cutting off arms of children to punish parents, and more. Can large-scale research design an effective global court, arbitration and negotiation system to replace the use of violence as a means of settling disputes? But isn’t that going to require a new system of global governance? It seems impossible to reform and recreate the United Nations into an adequate system of global governance, but surprise! Networking is developing alternate forms of supplemental and supportive governance at local, regional, national and global levels. Mayors in many countries are online with other mayors, legislators with legislators, along with educators and others who plan together. Perhaps this is where the European Union can become a networking laboratory for the rest of the world. But where is the mega-research project to study and evaluate all such experiments with networking. (Many working experiments in America, however primitive, are reported on http://www.govtech.net.) Could mega-research in the humanities discover how more effectively to enlarge the morals and ethics of everyone on the planet? Corruption seems to be rampant in all areas of human society. And more than morals and ethics are needed? Will it take large-scale research to find how best to deal with evil that seems to exist in every culture and individuals (not just in Hitlers who spell out lies to bewitch the masses)? Can large-scale research discover how better to nurture caring, compassion, as well as integrity, responsibility and honesty…and inspiration and motivation to get all citizens to act in support of significant projects to solve basic human crises? Now, having suggested some major questions for Volume II on possible futures for research in light of forthcoming more powerful technologies, we come to the need for mega-research on education and job-training for everyone on the planet. New and enlarging research into the brain and mind, for example, suggest that we are only at a primitive level in discovering what humanity needs to know about the uniqueness of each person and the impacts of so many different cultures; and how to avoid a new kind of global colonialism that seeks to use new technologies to impose uniform styles of learning. So we turn in Volume II to questions and research on better learning and education that is essential for the solving of each of the crises discussed above, and maybe 26,000 other minor crises. What other and new questions, hopefully better ones, will come to mind as we reflect on such untested questions? VOLUME THREE – Future Learning and Teaching. We have the opportunity now to learn much more about individual learners, about each teacher, about the brain and how we learn, about how to increase human intelligence, and about new kinds of aids and resources that can transform education. For all of their emphasis on research, universities have been reluctant to investigate their own educational activities with the rigor they focus on other research. Students are going to have more control over the learning process. Their focus will be on getting skills and competency, not on competing with other students for grades Kevin Kelly, in the September 2005 issue of Wired magazine, wrote about the future of networking and related powerful technologies that are likely to transform all human institutions, including schools and other learning opportunities. What different is going to be possible for and required of learners of all ages in a profoundly different future? Won’t education planners need the help of tool-designers with a larger technological imagination? Rather that trying to adapt technology created for other purposes, won’t education need mega-research to find what is essential and to create new kinds of technology to accomplish new goals? Technologies such as networking, broadband Internet, satellite technology, the coming together of many kinds of technology into hand-held tools are already pointing the way into what is likely to be an astonishing future. But how and by whom is it to be planned so that it is adequate to serve everyone in the world? And so that humanity does not fall into the trap of a mess of uncoordinated technologies? What kinds of more comprehensive research and redesign might best guide the development of a global 'education for all in virtual space/cyberspace’ master plan which might transcend and expand the vision of all the political and education leaders of all nations? It is crucial that educators--even the experts--admit their profound ignorance, their need for larger-scale experimentation and research. How can everyone be given a passion for lifelong learning? What kind of mega-research is needed? First, what do we need to know about the problems of each learner and how special programs can be created to help those who, for example, have poor eyesight or hearing, who find it hard to read, who live far from schools that teach what she needs to know, who have no money, and so forth? More important how can a `profile’ be created for each individual learner, bringing together all medical, educational and other records and test data, to serve as the basis for designed a special learning program for each unique individual? What helpful can be learned through life-mapping, tests to discover which of eight or so different intelligences an individual may have? How can classroom teaching be improved, whether students are 20 feet away from an instructor or 2000 miles away? Already there are successful experiments with `smart classrooms' that make possible more active classroom participation, even in large classes. There can be technologies that record and enhance classroom lectures—improving such as current iPods,-- those that that enable web-based videoconferencing, and student response systems like a TV remote, and student empowerment research has just begun. Forthcoming research can make it possible for virtual reality to |