A lesson in PCs

TO DATE, the relationship between technology and education has been, at best, a shy courtship.

PC manufacturers have proven to be earnest matchmakers - having much to gain - and productive flings with CDRoms or the Internet have given hints of the potential between the partners, but truly fruitful unions remain rare.

Discussion still centres on hardware and how to get it into libraries, schools, and universities. Shoved into the background are the less tangible but perhaps more substantive issues of how education gains by letting technology move in, and how technology might best woo education.

In an attempt to reintroduce the pair and reinvigorate the relationship, University College Dublin recently held an ambitious three day conference entitled European Lifelong Learning and the Information Society (ELLIS). It was opened by the President, Mrs Robinson, a former educator who indicated her own obvious engagement with the topic in her welcome speech.

Organised by Michael Foley, director of the Audio Visual Centre at UCD, the conference was attended by nearly 300 Irish and international delegates from technical developers to educators and administrators. Surprisingly little has been done to bring together developer, supplier and consumer in this way, which probably accounts for what speakers described as the low quality of much educational material on software or CD-Rom.

Speaker after speaker noted that technology still isn't user friendly enough for teachers. The President noted that it was her 15 year old son who had taught her much about using computers, reflecting a wider situation in which students from kindergarten to third level arrive in class very computer literate, ready for the wired classroom, while teachers often find the technology intimidation.

Since the industrial revolution, "teachers and university professors still use the same blackboards and the same chalk", said Michel Richonnier of the European Commission. The director of DG XIII's telematics application programme, appropriately enough he spoke to the conference audience via a videoconferencing system.

He said a technological revolution was now at hand that would alter education completely, introducing new teaching techniques and capabilities and, theoretically, making education available to far flung adult learners through distance education. If putting men on the moon was an achievement, "to invent the school of the future is an even more formidable task", he said.

Roger O'Keefe, an Irish representative on DG XXII (Education, Training and Youth), concurred. "The enormous vistas that are opening up are both exciting and frightening," he said. "We have to learn how to master the technology rather than let it master us."

The keynote speaker was Dr Tony Bates, who worked at the Open University and is now director of distance education and technology at the University of British Columbia. The open access "global classroom" is the sought after ideal, and one which should not be heavily subsidised by commercial interests which could determine content, he said.

He showed examples of CDRom and Web based projects already in use at his university, including a programme that the music department uses to teach perfect pitch. The computer plays a tone which students sing back, and the computer evaluates the result.

Another teaches forestry management through a game in which users plant their acres and manage the growth over 10 years. "Technology is not the issue," he said. "What we need are high quality, adaptable materials and new approaches for teaching lifelong learners."

Introduced by President Robinson, the issue of access came up throughout the conference. There was clear concern that technology should not only benefit students in schools which can afford the hardware and software, but should make a wide variety of learning available to the widest possible number of people. Mrs Robinson also reminded delegates that the benefits of technology for education should also go from wealthier to less developed nations.

In this vein, the absurdities of blinkered technological proselytising were pointed out by Ted Leath of Magee College in Derry, who had recently heard a man give an enthusiastic presentation on bringing computers into African villages to enable distance learning.

"Many African countries have problems just getting electricity into villages," he sighed.