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STATE AND INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE
Australian IT
Browser-based teaching
Karen Dearne
A shift from PCs to network/appliance computing is about to revolutionize education in schools, universities, the workplace and across nations. To date, public schools have struggled to provide enough PCs for student needs, while teachers have been left to wrestle with technical and support issues. Lessons have focused on teaching kids how to use technology, rather than using technology as a teaching tool. Traditional universities are under pressure as more people seek access to higher education - resulting in overcrowded lecture halls and less personal tuition. And changing workplace demands mean people have to constantly refresh and upgrade their skills.
But a simple move to a new model - network/appliance, or browser-based computing - will solve many of these problems and deliver, well, education on steroids: personalized, customized, optimized and lifelong learning for every student and adult learner.
Or as Sun Microsystems vice-president of global education and research Kim Jones says: "Anywhere, anytime, any place and on anything. The beauty of network computing is that the actual computer can be managed centrally somewhere by a service provider. In the classroom, both teacher and students access information via browser-type devices, or appliances, which are just windows to content."
Jones says there's no reason why we all have to learn how to manage computers. After all, we don't need to know how a phone works or how to use a switchboard. "We really can make the use of computers for accessing information as simple as using a phone," she says. "Our goal is to take the complexity out of the classroom and put it back with IT professionals. "Let teachers get back to teaching, let students focus on learning and use technology as an enabler, rather than the focal point of the classroom." Today, teachers need to teach pretty much to the class median. But the web-browser/device approach offers a chance to customize the curriculum for every child in class. "Think of eight-year-olds learning fractions in third grade. The students that are really good at math may be bored to death - customized lessons mean they can be doing algebra instead," Jones says.
"The ones that are struggling may need to be revising basic multiplication and division - and all of these things can be done in the same class. No child is left behind." The teacher becomes more of a learning facilitator, able to spend more time with kids who need it, without holding back those shooting ahead.
Those devices may look a bit like a PC - but students equally may be using things such as thin clients, set-top boxes, and Sun's Sun Ray appliances. "You can do a lot from a PalmPilot or a WAP phone right now. Analysts predict that by 2005, PCs will represent only 20 per cent of the devices used by people to access information," she says.
Sun Microsystems is presently testing its Sun Ray technology in a number of Australian schools to test the concept in practice. Jones, who was in Australia last month to attend the Global Summit of Online Knowledge Networks in Adelaide, says education is one of the exciting areas for IT innovation. "Changing the way we deliver education removes a lot of barriers of space and time that we've faced in the past." A big issue facing nations is how to educate a much larger proportion of the workforce for higher skilled jobs. "For every manual labour position that's being lost, there are two or three new knowledge worker type jobs that need to be filled," she says. "Education is critical in the information age and every country faces the challenge of how to adapt traditional models of education and make them scalable for today's world."
The current worldwide education IT market is about $US30 billion ($56.5 billion). This will grow rapidly as universities begin collaborations with other institutions globally, and online courses become available to people worldwide - good news for Australia, already a large exporter of education services.
For now, the prospect of online education is still ruffling some feathers among the old school. But e-learning will mature quickly simply because educators must apply IT solutions if they are to meet today's learning challenges.
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