"Multimedia" and "Information expressway" have become two technical levers in the transition from the industrial age to the information age, changing people's working methods, learning methods, thinking methods, communication methods and even lifestyles at an alarming rate. Undoubtedly, the development and popularization of contemporary information technology will become the third milestone in the development of human culture.
How does education meet this cross-century challenge?
First, the impact of contemporary information technology on education
(A) the contrast between the two "destinies"
Education is the field of training talents for the future, but the reform and development of education is always lagging behind, which is an antinomy that society cannot tolerate. Investigating the influence of contemporary information technology on education, we can deeply feel this antinomy.
In the early 1980s, when the first batch of microcomputers appeared in the classrooms of schools in developed countries, some people excitedly predicted that computers would bring a revolution to the field of education. Ten years later, this revolution appeared in the fields of film and television, publishing and printing, national defense department, office automation and so on, but it never happened in schools. Many schools spend a lot of money on computers just to learn simple computer operation and complicated programming languages. Or put the contents of the book on the screen. In recent years, some computer companies have pushed various "electronic question banks" to tired students for profit, but the results will certainly not be welcomed by teachers and students, especially teachers engaged in subject education, who still prefer their accustomed chalk pens and blackboards and are almost "insulated" from the computer world.
However, contrary to the "cold reception" in the field of education, computers and their twin game consoles are very popular in the game kingdom of children and even adults. In the fast-paced modern society, they can easily occupy people's precious leisure time and a lot of money. The sudden video game industry has a huge consumer market of more than $654.38+0.5 billion in the world, and its scale is even larger than that of the American film industry. The speed of its technology update is even more incredible: the latest "virtual reality" technology in the information field was only developed by NASA with an investment of 200,000 US dollars, and soon Nintendo launched a "virtual boy" electronic game console with a price of only 199 US dollars; Today's fastest Intel processor executes 6,543.8 billion instructions per second, while Sony's latest electronic "play station" with a price of $200 is 65,438+00 times faster than the former.
It seems that the main reason for the tragic fate of computers in education is not technology itself, but outside technology.
(2) Inspiration from the winners
In fact, it is not all a tragedy that computers have trudged in the field of education for more than ten years.
In the mid-1980s, in the market forecast of educational technology, the educators of Apple in the United States were eager to study and understand such a question: When modern educational technology centered on computers is as convenient as using books and paper, what will happen to the teaching activities of teachers and students? So they chose some classes in several schools to carry out experiments, equipped each student and teacher with two computers, one at school and the other at home, and started an experimental study on education reform called "appleclassroon of tomorrow". The research lasted for 65,438+00 years, and accumulated rich first-hand information [②], especially in improving educational efficiency.
This experimental research is essentially exploring and creating the learning environment and educational model in the information age, so it was first welcomed by students. At the end of the first school year, students' attention and learning attitude improved obviously, and they began to change from passive knowledge acceptance to active exploration and personalized independent learning, although it takes some time and energy to master educational technology. However, when they learn and study all kinds of knowledge and skills with the guidance and help of teachers, their interest, ability and efficiency in learning are getting higher and higher. A fourth-grade teacher wrote in the summary: "Students are not tired of computer work. They actually want more things. In my past teaching experience, I rarely see students asking for extra homework. " In the past, people often worried that students would become lonely because of lack of communication with their peers when they were dealing with computers all day. The conclusion of the experiment is completely opposite: autonomous learning with new technology can promote communication and cooperation between students more than traditional classroom teaching. This new educational model has prompted profound changes in teachers' concepts and behaviors. The traditional teacher-student relationship and communication mode have been fundamentally changed. Teachers deeply feel that they are not so much preachers as managers and guides. The efforts to integrate modern educational technology into the classroom make them re-examine the basic principles of education and think about a series of new characteristics of teachers' profession in the information society in the future. New technology liberates teachers from a large number of repetitive educational activities. Devoting creativity to more challenging and personalized communication between teachers and students is obviously an important way to fundamentally improve the effectiveness of education. As a teacher said, "new technology has kept me enthusiastic about being a teacher, but now I am different from before." Now I am instructing students. They control their own education, create their own knowledge, and use their creativity to study and express information to others. "
Apple is not the only director of this educational reform comedy. All successful actors and lucky audiences will gain the following knowledge: Contemporary information technology brings not only changes in means and methods, but also a historic change including educational ideas and modes. Therefore, if we can't update our ideas and change our models, the application of educational technology will not only fail to improve educational benefits, but also lead to the waste of educational resources.
How to study the influence of information technology on future education? There is an important methodological problem here. People often only understand the relationship between them on the surface, so they only see two aspects directly related to them: on the one hand, information technology will cause changes in educational technology and even educational means and methods; On the other hand, information technology itself will become an important part of education. These two aspects are good, but in fact, when technology has an impact on education, it often goes through the important intermediary and bridge of culture. Therefore, discussing what changes the contemporary information technology has brought and will bring to human cultural foundation and even lifestyle, and then discussing the impact on future education may broaden our research horizons.
Second, the fission of contemporary information technology in the three cornerstones of culture and education
In the printing age, reading, writing and arithmetic are recognized as the three pillars of culture and the three cornerstones of traditional education. All countries in the world regard the cultivation of these three abilities as the primary task of basic education, and teachers and students have devoted a lot of effort to this. Contemporary information technology has triggered a powerful fission of education, the three foundations of traditional culture.
(A) changes in reading style
Education must ultimately be implemented in students' active learning. Therefore, obtaining materials and information in various forms of reading comprehension is the main way for students to learn and develop. Similarly, creating the most favorable information environment for students and teaching students the ability to acquire and process information are the main tasks of teachers' teaching work. Studying and grasping the changes of reading style brought by contemporary information technology is an important window to understand and grasp the educational model in the information age. The changes in reading methods caused by contemporary information technology are highlighted in the following three aspects.
1. From text reading to hypertext reading.
Since the appearance of printing technology, human beings have become accustomed to the work and life style of reading texts and looking for needed information from various books and materials. The knowledge and information in the text can only be arranged in a linear structure, so the speed and efficiency of reading and retrieval have insurmountable boundaries. Facing the severe challenge of "knowledge explosion", how can human beings transcend this boundary? The emergence of "electronic books and periodicals" has brought good news to mankind. In "electronic books and periodicals", the connection between knowledge is no longer linear, but network, and there are many connection combinations and retrieval methods, which shows people a brand-new and efficient hypertext reading and retrieval method.
2. From simply reading words to multimedia e-books.
The traditional reading material is text, but the object of e-book reading has expanded from abstract text to images, sounds, three-dimensional animation and other media. This is the "hypermedia" reading in the information age. This almost "holographic" reading way across time and space combines reading with feeling and experience, which greatly improves the interest and efficiency of reading.
3. Efficient retrieval and reading in dialogue with electronic database.
The biggest change brought by computer to reading mode is the appearance of efficient retrieval reading mode. We might as well give an example to help people understand the significance of this change. Starting from 1985, it took China seven years to input the collated version of Twenty-Five History by Zhonghua Book Company into the computer, and established the "Full-text Retrieval System of Twenty-Five History". When you want to find meteorological information about "wind" from this masterpiece, the time and energy required to use traditional reading retrieval methods can be imagined. Now, using hypertext reading and computer automatic retrieval, you only need to type in keywords such as "wind" and "meteorology" to make necessary restrictions (excluding "wind" unrelated to meteorology). In just 6 seconds, the computer will screen out 10968 paragraphs and 149 18 words for you to read on the basis of reading the full text of Twenty-Five History, and form a special article for you to read. If you still want to simplify, you can talk to the computer again until you get satisfactory information, and the computer will make sure that you never tire of asking questions.
After understanding this brand-new reading and retrieval method in the information age, it is not difficult to imagine the great changes that will take place in the library, teachers preparing lessons and students' learning methods. At the same time, to cultivate this new reading ability, we should not only start from childhood, but also urgently need to make up lessons for adults and even "read". This has become an important mission that can't be ignored in China's cross-century education, 5438+0995. The sales of electronic encyclopedias all over the world have exceeded the sales of paper-printed encyclopedias. (4) The information conveyed by this data to human beings is not only multifaceted, but also shocking. Of course, the reading ability of hypertext and hypermedia is still based on the traditional text reading ability, but the latter has distinct characteristics of the times, which reflects the challenge and stimulation of the information society to the individual's creative learning ability.
(B) changes in writing style
In the wave of computers sweeping the office and even the family, journalists, writers, scientists, secretaries and even leading cadres are "changing pens" in the contradictory psychology of excitement and pain. In contrast, the control and preference of the new generation of school children for the keyboard and mouse "pen" is naturally induced by the "magic" of electronic game machines. This shows that the information age poses a strong and sharp challenge to the traditional writing style. What changes will contemporary information technology bring to writing style and writing education? I think the following four points stand out.
1. From handwriting to keyboard input, mouse input, scanning input and voice input.
The appearance and perfection of computer word processing system has greatly improved the efficiency of human writing, which is not only manifested in the fast speed of text input, but also in the expansion of functions, which makes e-book writing extremely flexible and can be copied, copied, supplemented and deleted at will, greatly saving a lot of repetitive work in writing. This is a saving of human energy and even life. Once the human-computer interface technologies such as scanning input, light pen and data board input, voice input, and computer vision systems such as "eye tracker" and machine translation are further matured, a more "friendly" human-computer dialogue interface will appear, which will accelerate the popularization of computer writing mode, which will be even more immeasurable for the saving of human resources and the improvement of writing efficiency in the whole society.
2. Multimedia writing and pictures, sounds and shapes.
The content and form of writing have also changed. Writing in the printing age is mainly written in words. Only scientific and mathematical writing is mixed with professional symbols, and sometimes there are illustrations in artistic and scientific writing. In electronic media writing, symbols, images, sounds and even three-dimensional animations appear and are used more and more frequently. This "multimedia" writing form will become more and more important for the communication, exchange and mutual understanding between writers and readers in modern and future society. Accordingly, the ability to write with pictures and texts should also be cultivated from an early age. The writing and production of multimedia "scripts" will become more and more popular, and even become a compulsory course in primary and secondary education.
3. The concept and writing of hypertext structure.
The structural changes of electronic texts have brought more drastic changes to the way of writing and even thinking. Traditional articles and works have fixed linear text structure, while electronic text is flexible and changeable network hypertext structure. Articles written and printed on paper can only list chapter titles, while articles written and read on computer screens need to treat each paragraph or even keyword as an independent unit. And establish a variety of network communication channels between them, and provide them to readers in different orders. Select the most appropriate "keywords" for each article or even each chapter to summarize its content, so as to provide readers with a quick and simple retrieval method, which is actually to incorporate articles into the huge "article database" of the information society.
4. Integration of reading and writing in dialogue with electronic database.
When hypertext, hypermedia e-books and the global giant information database established by the network extending in all directions of "Information expressway" appeared, the gap between authors and readers in the past was broken, and many text structures read and combined by readers according to their own needs were unprecedented. Therefore, they belong to the "creative" achievements of readers. In this man-machine dialogue between reader and database, the integration of reading and writing is realized. This is obviously an extremely important reading and writing ability in the information society, which is supported by modern consciousness and modern thinking that are more flexible, open, complex and efficient. This new thinking mode will be externalized into a more intelligent man-machine integrated reading and writing mode, thus opening up a broader creative time and space and calling for a suitable future education model.
(c) Changes in calculation methods
Traditional computing ability is only related to mathematics and mathematics education. When the application of computer is extended to all fields of social life, people are forced to explore the connection and transformation between digital and numerical calculation and all aspects of social life, which greatly expands the concept of calculation and makes the whole social life more and more "digital".
1. From mathematical calculation to digital simulation, high-speed operation is carried out with "base 2 code" and binary.
The cornerstone of computer design idea is "radix -2 code" with "bit" (the smallest unit of information) as the fulcrum. Any problem in any field, if you want to solve it by computer, must be converted into "computer language", which can be expressed by two numbers: 0 and 1. Thus, the essence of computer research is to explore how to use "radix -2 code" and binary to express the problems to be solved in various fields. Now, with the amazing development of computer operation speed, especially the maturity of software technology and the appearance of various tool platforms, the pure digital computer language is retreating from the "foreground" to the "background", and various "friendly" interfaces appear, which makes people's instructions for computer processing gradually change from digitalization and specialization to popularization and popularization. After such a "makeover",
2. Digitalization of characters makes computers rise from language to culture, and integrates the three pillars of traditional culture-education (reading, writing and calculating).
Digitalization of characters can be regarded as an important cornerstone or milestone for computers to enter all fields of human life. Since then, the world of written expression and description can be transformed into a binary computer language, and computers have also begun to upgrade from technology to culture. At this point, reading, writing and arithmetic, as the three pillars of human traditional culture, are inextricably integrated in computer language culture, which is a challenge and promotion for future society and future education.
3. Digitalization of images, sounds, movies and TV plays has enabled human beings to enter the computer simulation world of "virtual reality", making digitalization an important cultural way, survival way and education way for human beings to grasp history, reality and future.
Computer culture didn't stop there. When she conquered the sound world, the image world, and even the three-dimensional animation world more complicated than words, the whole world was shocked. It is the digital miracle created by "Multimedia" and "Information expressway" that swept the world in recent years that transformed this new development of computer culture into modern technology and changed the whole living environment of mankind.
The meaning of "multimedia" technology is not the comprehensive application of various media, but the integration of information recorded and expressed by various media through the development and wide application of digital technology. Nowadays, from the famous books in the library to the huge databases such as pictures, movies, audio tapes and video tapes that express the material and spiritual world of human beings with sounds and images, these high-density compressed data with light and electricity as carriers are always galloping in the high-speed global "information expressway" network, waiting for the "networking" and "stimulation" with human wisdom across time and space, creating endless wealth and fun, and creating a new world of digital existence with ever-changing speed.
The concepts of "multimedia" and "information expressway" have appeared in the mass media for less than five years, but they have changed people's communication, study, work and lifestyle at an alarming rate, making the "global village" smaller and smaller, and making the whole world more and more digital, networked and intelligent.
Above, we have discussed the challenges and changes that reading, writing and computing, as the cultural foundation, will face when the printing era is transformed into the electronic information era. From this small window, we can easily see that the cross-century cultural and educational changes we are experiencing are sharp and profound. Traditional education pays attention to cultural inheritance, while modern and future education pays more attention to cultivating people's creativity while inheriting culture. Thus, the continuous transcendence of culture can be realized. Cultural transcendence has both quantitative change and qualitative change. Whenever the foundation of culture changes substantially, the qualitative change of culture is inevitable. From this, we can have a deeper insight into the trend and prospect of educational reform and development in the information age.