ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 4, 1996 TAG: 9605060060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
COMPUTERS AND OTHER telecommunications advances have increased students' access to knowledge and shown them a new world of possibilities.
At the John Wayland Elementary School in Rockingham County, the children in teacher Marilyn Wall's fourth-grade class are exploring outer space through cyberspace.
Through the use of live telecasts, e-mail and video conferences, the pupils are learning about planets, stars and galaxies.
They have taken a "virtual" field trip through space aboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Kuiper Airborne Observatory and observed Jupiter and other planets.
The children have sent e-mail questions to NASA scientists during the live broadcasts and received answers. They have communicated with pupils at other schools in video conferences across the country.
Educational technology has enabled the fourth-graders to experience and study something that would otherwise remain foreign to them, Wall said Friday at a Roanoke conference on educational technology. "They have become excited by space. It has become real for them."
"The Shenandoah Valley is a very rural area. Stars, planets and galaxies are not something that's usually discussed around the dinner table in my students' homes," she said.
"Most of them see themselves growing up to work on farms, own a small business or do something else they know about. They don't think about space or a career in something like that."
But technology has broadened the students' perspectives and made them aware of the larger world and universe, she said.
The space exploration program is part of the National Science Foundation and NASA's Passport to Knowledge, a series of "electronic field trips" to scientific frontiers. The series, which will include studies of Mars and Antarctica during the next school year, uses interactive television and on-line computer networks to take students on research expeditions.
The impact of technology on education is the subject of a three-day Virginia Society for Technology in Education conference that has attracted more than 850 teachers from across the state for dozens of workshops and lectures.
More than 70 vendors of computers, software, videos and other educational products also have exhibits at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center for the event, which ends today.
There are workshops for everyone - from "A Beginner's Guide to the Internet" to "The Social-Ethical and Legal Issues of Educational Networking."
For teachers who have wondered whether computers can help them, there was a workshop Friday on "Using a Computer to Make a Teacher's Life Easier."
Computers are being used to keep grades; databases are being used to organize classrooms.
Many workshops are being conducted by teachers discussing the technology and materials they are using in elementary, middle and high schools in a broad range of subjects: algebra, biology, chemistry, English, geometry, humanities, math, science and writing.
Critics have complained that educational technology has diminished the human element in education, but Wall said she has found the opposite to be true in her space exploration program at the Rockingham County school.
"As my kids read e-mail and keep field journals, technology has furthered the human connection. They have talked with children from across the country," she said.
Technology is changing the nature of education and the classroom, said Chris Dede, a professor at George Mason University and an expert on emerging technologies.
Dede, a speaker at the conference, said the conventional approach of "teaching by telling" in the classroom is being transformed into "distributed learning" through computers and the Internet. Students learn through collaboration and communication with people outside their classrooms, he said.
Technology can create "knowledge webs, virtual communities and synthetic environments" that enable students to learn through doing, he said.
No longer do teachers have to lecture as much, he said. And teachers don't have to be experts because there are many sources of expertise available on the Internet or through other technology, he said.
Dede predicted that the term "distance learning" won't be used in another 10 years because it implies that the preferred learning situation is for the student to be in the same room as a teacher. But he said that isn't necessarily true: Students can learn more in a collaborative environment where they have access and contact with many sources of information through the Internet and other technology.
Dede said virtual reality technology provides many opportunities to improve education and learning, but that it also has a frightening potential: escapism and propaganda.
He said the challenge for today's student is different from when he got his doctoral degree, for instance. The task then was to find information, he said. Today, the student must filter information because so much is available because of the new technology, he said.
"We are drowning in a sea of information. The challenge is to learn how to swim instead of drowning," he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff Friday, at the Virginia Society forby CNBTechnology in Education conference, company consultant Ron Revere
demonstrates the Lego Dacta Control System for Bent Mountain
Elementary School teachers K. Anderson (center) and Barbara Guynn.
Students use it to build and control models by computer.