PERSPECTIVE ON EDUCATION : Technology Married to Learning: a Millennial Wedding : A controversy over profit-sharing with UCLA was just a small glitch in the exploration of new ways of learning.
In approaching the millennium, Americans may justifiably argue that millennial ideas are in short supply. Faced with a multitude of challenges from within, our society is seeking the visionary concepts--from worlds as diverse as economics, multiculturalism and even particle physics--that will lead us into the 21st Century. However, such direction will not be found in financial innovation, social service or scientific discovery. Rather, it will come from the frontiers of education.
Over the years, we shifted from an agrarian to an industrial society. Now, we are in an information and knowledge-based age. A country, community or company is not its factories, buildings or natural resources but its people. These people, well-educated and technologically advanced, are a society’s most valued resource.
Tomorrow’s promise is grounded in the marriage of education and technology, in interactive networks that will bring ideas, knowledge and new ways of thinking to people young and old, in schools, homes and workplaces. Satellites, data compression technology, CD-ROM and speedier computers have all brought new worlds of information to ever-larger audiences. The prospects are limitless for students of any age, for training, retraining and pure knowledge enhancement.
The widening gap in compensation in this society is, increasingly, a byproduct of knowledge. For example, in 1978, an American male in his early 30s with a college degree earned 32% more than his counterpart with a high-school degree. In less than a decade, this education premium increased to more than 60%. Today, in a world where countries compete to produce the best-educated labor force, sheer desire is no longer enough.
I’ve had a unique opportunity in the past 25 years to work with educators at the kindergarten through 12th-grade level, with students and professors at colleges and universities and with entrepreneurs in fields including the cable, communications and entertainment industries. From this, I have developed a passion and vision for the concept of educational television. My new company, EEN Communications Network, has grown from these experiences; its mission is to combine education with entertainment, communications and technology to make learning accessible and engaging, via software, videotape, satellite broadcasting and whatever fast-evolving technologies the future may offer.
One of the network’s many efforts was a pilot project at UCLA. My teaching relationship with the university began about a decade ago, when I participated in a UCLA summer session with finance professors from historically black colleges and universities. In 1993, I was asked to be a guest lecturer at the John Anderson Graduate School of Management. The network taped the classes with an eye to producing educational programming on corporate finance topics. This project was intended to benefit UCLA and allow the university to share in the profits from this project. The idea was that 100% of the costs would be borne by EEN Communications Network, with 50% of the profits going to educators and educational institutions, including a share to UCLA, and 50% to the network.
This effort was enthusiastically embraced by the UCLA administration and its finance faculty. As measured by comments from the students, professors and guest lecturers, including executives like Bert Roberts of MCI and public officials including Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who is also a UC regent, the course was a success.
Then the nay-sayers struck, focusing only on UCLA’s 5% rather than the 50% going to educators and universities around the world.
Therefore, the network is offering to cancel the existing contract with UCLA and separate UCLA from its other, for-profit, ventures. If the many hours of footage from the UCLA class are eventually edited, the network will donate the tapes to the University of California.
The network continues to collaborate with education and technology pioneers and professors from other colleges and universities across the country. Its goal remains to develop software, video and interactive education products to be distributed and broadcast to homes, offices and learning centers. While networks and entertainment producers have not yet found educational broadcasting commercially viable, I believe this will change. Information technology holds the greatest promise ever for leveling society’s “playing field” by providing everyone with access to high-quality informational materials. Many people have credited CNN and others with helping to bring down the Berlin Wall. I believe this historical event will pale in comparison to the ability of education--combined with the best of technology, communication and entertainment--to bring opportunities to all, whether in South-Central Los Angeles or Bel Air, whether young or old.
It is now estimated that the average person will have five different jobs during a working life, each requiring different skills. At the same time, the percentage of our population “too big” to go to school continues to increase. In 1960, one-third of Americans were under 18 years of age. Today, only one-quarter are under 18, even as the overall population continues to grow. Without access to training and education, this large, aging segment of our society will not be able to compete for jobs that increasingly require new skills. Instead of contributing to our country’s productivity, these hard-working people will continue to be frustrated with rapidly changing technology and, in some cases, be forced to leave the assembly line for the unemployment line.
Recently, at the Milken Family Foundation National Education Conference, 1,500 educators joined business and technology leaders to discuss partnerships between education and the private sector. I was again reminded of the rapidly evolving requirements of our job producers and of the determination of our educators to provide well-trained, responsive graduates.
A combination of education and technology, made readily available to our schoolchildren, teachers and adults at home or in the workplace, represents the brightest opportunity for achievement and for the knitting together of an America too often divided by economic and cultural differences. Access to knowledge is the most lasting millennial idea of them all.
