Pilot Implementations

Once a set of technologies and educational strategies are sufficiently well-developed, they are ready for pilot implementation. Pilots are essential to avoid pitfalls before full-scale implementations are attempted. In large-scale pilot projects, we can work out the kinks and explore the organizational and policy issues that must be addressed prior to larger implementations.

Netcourse Central. Netcourses, complete courses offered over the Internet, are just becoming feasible on a large scale. We are undertaking major pilot tests of netcourses in INTEC and VHS. The INTEC project promises a model for sophisticated teacher professional development at half the cost of competing models. The VHS greatly increases the range and quality of courses available at participating schools by creating low-cost, sustainable school cooperatives that share netcourses. The netcourse idea has important implications to many other areas of education.

Ubiquitous Computing. It is only a few years before Internet access and pocket computers are so inexpensive that every learner and parent have easy access to portable networked computers. This could revolutionize education and permit a wholesale reorganization of the curricula. The technical capacity for this will happen long before we know how to utilize its educational capacity. This strand will study pilot tests of possible large scale changes in schools and communities which ubiquitous computers would support.

Innovative Models. Most instructional models that are currently in use on the Web are relatively direct adaptations of existing educational structures. Are we being blinded by the past and creating the network equivalent of a horseless carriage? Can the technology permit a new design that would have far more learning potential? This strand of work hopes to pilot test novel learning environments, such as NetAdventure™, community-wide learning, and virtual museums.

Dissemination

Our primary work involves pushing the frontier, but we want our research to be expanded and used, so we have organized two strands to get the information out and provide a mechanism for partnerships.

Information Services. This newsletter, our Web pages, and a growing collection of books and reports represent a major effort to share quickly and in depth what we are learning and to provide forums for sharing information in specialized areas such as probeware and netcourses.

Concord Educational Services. We are planning a new effort to provide services based on our R&D. These services are taking the form of workshops, netcourses, consulting, small projects, and commercial ventures.

It is essential that we retain many of the virtues of being small. We plan to do this by creating quasi-independent Centers. It would be a mistake, however, to organize ourselves into the five areas listed above, because any single body of work must be able to move through these phases. Instead, we are creating clusters of strands that have similarities. We now have only one Center, the Educational Technology Lab led by Raymond Rose. We will soon create a Center for Sustainable Futures and an International Center.

This coming decade will see a huge increase in interest in educational technologies. Educators, parents and policy makers will demand research-based content that begins to exploit the revolution- ary technologies that are increasingly commonplace. We hope that our combination of Centers and functional orientation will help us produce the needed leadership and give us the institutional flexibility to respond to these demands.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
R & D Effort :: Masthead :: Cool Reviews :: Famine to Feast ::
The Jungle Story :: INTEC Reviews :: Professional Development ::
New Programs :: LearningSpace :: Perspective :: Get Involved! ::

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