| Steven Clift on Wed, 1 Apr 1998 01:50:58 +0200 (MET DST) |
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| <nettime> Reed Hundt - Better [email protected] - WSJ Article |
[Also sent to [email protected]; organization: Democracies Online] E-MAIL FOR ALL - An Outreach Campaign of the Markle Foundation ---------- http://www.iaginteractive.com/emfa/ ---------- Enclosed is an article written by Reed Hundt, former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission and member of the Markle Foundation's E-Mail for All Advisory Board. The "Better [email protected]" commentary appeared in the Tuesday, March 31, 1998 Editorial section of the Wall Street Journal. You are encouraged to distribute this article to others who are interested in the use of e-mail in education. Comments on the article and general suggestions related to the topic of broad e-mail access and use by students, teachers, and parents in education may sent to the E-Mail for All staff at: [email protected] For more information on the E-Mail for All outreach effort, please visit the web site at: http://www.iaginteractive.com/emfa The full text of the article: Wall Street Journal Editorial Section - Commentary March 31, 1998 Better [email protected] By REED HUNDT More than 40,000 schools have applied for money from the Federal Communications Commission's new universal service fund, which will send $625 million their way this year. This is just the beginning of about $13 billion that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 authorizes be collected and spent on education and rural health care over the next five years. Where can this money make the biggest difference? Not in paying for cutting-edge technologies. We can bring about vast improvements in how our children are educated with nothing more complicated or expensive than e-mail. The most important people in a child's life--teachers and parents--hardly ever talk to one another. Normally they meet twice a year at most. Other than that, there isn't much more than a report card and the occasional note sent home. The typical message in the other direction is a note for the teacher with an excuse for homework that hasn't been completed. That's about it. Teachers and parents should have a great deal to say to one another. But they have trouble communicating because it is so difficult for them to make a rendezvous. Teachers don't have telephones in their classrooms or time in their day to place calls. And working parents may not be available to talk on the phone or in person unless there is a true emergency. E-mail is a perfect solution, for it will let parents and teachers have a conversation when it's convenient for both parties. More advanced technologies--like databases and computer modeling--will also have an impact on the nation's classrooms, but simple e-mail between parents and teachers will change the dynamic of parent-teacher-student relations, and can bring systemic changes to the educational system. This would be a giant step away from mass education toward mass individualization, in which the educational system could recognize and address the needs of particular students. Teachers could even e-mail homework assignments to parents, which would allow them to better supervise their youngsters in the evening. E-mail in the schools can also change teacher-to-teacher relations. Teachers are in classrooms most of the day and generally interact with one another only during breaks from their duties. As a result, observations of changes in a child's behavior are seldom shared among members of the community of adults who see that child every day. So as Congress prepares to receive the first FCC report on how the universal service money will be spent, let's not get sidetracked by oversight issues or caught up in the technologies of tomorrow. E-mail, which is available today, is the "killer application" that can vastly improve the quality of American education. Mr. Hundt is a former chairman of the FCC and an advisory board member of the Markle Foundation. Copyright c 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Redistributed as published with the permission of the author. -- -- The E-MAIL FOR ALL outreach campaign is an integral part of the Markle Foundation's work to encourage the use of new communications technologies for socially beneficial purposes. E-MAIL FOR ALL - An Outreach Campaign of the Markle Foundation ---------- http://www.iaginteractive.com/emfa/ ---------- -----End of forwarded message----- --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: [email protected]