The need to redesign our educational systems for the radically different needs of tomorrow is one of the key observations made by the recently published first annual report, of the European Commission’s Information Society Forum. Amongst its main conclusions -in the form of twelve propositions - The Forum calls for the Information Society to become the "Lifelong Learning Society". This means that the sources of education and training must be extended beyond the traditional institutions to include the home, the community, companies and other organisations.
It also stated that the teaching professions need help to adapt to the changing situation so that the new opportunities can be fully exploited. The Forum are firmly convinced that Europe will not successfully apply the new information and communications technologies unless public discussion is wide and deep, and unless people are involved in making decisions on such key matters as "protection of privacy, rights of access to public information and redesigning our educational systems for the radically different needs of tomorrow."
As well as insisting that the Information Society must become the "Lifelong Learning Society," the propositions also emphasise that the new technologies will eventually create more jobs than
they destroy, that teleworking will be the employment future for millions of people, that no one should be excluded from the Information Society and that individual liberties must be protected against the dangers of a "snooping society".
The Forum also considers that the "Learning Company" must emerge as a vital component of the "Learning Society". People who work in it will be using their electronic access to knowledge and information to update their skills. This requires new forms of partnership between businesses and other organisations and educators to ensure that the new and changing skills required are made available.
As "the pace of change is becoming so fast people can only adapt if the Information Society becomes the "Lifelong Learning Society". In order to build and maintain competitive economic advantages, skills and talents must be constantly reshaped to meet the changing needs of the work place, wherever that is. These skills and talents will also have broader opportunities for expression because the Learning Society will offer unprecedented possibilities for personal development and fulfilment."
The Forum believes that education and training must be swiftly reoriented so that learning institutions are much more responsive to changes in the skills needed by businesses and industries. This is a key to job creation and will have to be part of a wider restructuring of education systems. However, the Forum are very concerned about the barriers to the fundamental changes that are needed. These include:
resistance to change within educational systems and to changes of role within the teaching professions
the inability to develop learning systems based on information technologies because of shortages of hardware and software in schools and colleges
the huge challenge of equipping teachers with the new tutorial skills needed to make the best use of the information technologies
lack of adequate software for teaching courses
the differing approaches of Member States to the deregulation of telecommunications is helping to delay the early use of information technologies and the development of an educational software market.
However by contrast, the Forum considers that further and higher education institutions appear much less handicapped. In many Member States, they are beginning to lay the foundations for the learning communities of the future.
The Forum feels sure that education has to move from teacher-centredness to learner-centredness. It considers that "among the urgent tasks challenging us are the needs to promote good practice in training teachers to use information technologies, to investigate the potential for distance learning and its practical applications, and to stimulate the production of educational software and courseware."
The Forum in making a number of recommendations to the European Commission considers that there is a need to establish what Member States are doing to introduce the new technologies in the public education and training sectors so that the Commission’s own activities and those of the Information Society Forum can co-ordinate with them. There is a need to examine the education and training implications of the EU’s range of Information Society activities and disseminate to educators a comprehensive and integrated view of the issues and initiatives.
The Forum are hopeful that teaching, combined with the large steps software producers are making towards much more user-friendly appliances, applications and services, will enable most people to operate the new technologies (the needs of some disabled must be specially studied and catered for). But the Forum doubts whether in a short term every home can be wired up for interactive multi-media which raises the danger of discrimination against certain social groups, localities and regions. Therefore local access points are needed to allow everyone to plug into the networks of knowledge and information.
Meanwhile, the Forum sees three ways of minimising these dangers. One way involves a commitment by governments to make basic interactive services (public information, education and health) available to all, irrespective of geographical location and at affordable prices for all. This is the essence of universal service. A second way involves the creation of local access points at public libraries, schools and other community meeting places for people who cannot access from home. This would approximate to universal access. A third way involves extending the public service mission of public service broadcasters to electronic information services and ensuring the delivery of these services by "must carry" obligations.
As obviously, the universal service imposes a financial burden and the Forum intends to work on some recommendations on this and other aspects during the coming twelve months. It was also noted that pilot projects reveal that slow learners in schools do better with the help of information technologies, that telematics can restore greater tranquillity and safety to transport, that the Internet is encouraging people to form creative cyber-communities and that teleworking improves quality of life.
It is planned that future work for the Forum in the area of lifelong learning will be centred on:
what are the key basic skills for the 21st century?
the economic and social importance of "Lifelong Learning" and the need to restructure education systems to enable the school, the home and the workplace to contribute more effectively
how to stimulate the educational materials marketplace (and the communications infrastructure) as enablers for the development of good practice
what are the implications of shifting from teacher-centredness to learner-centredness?
the need to develop a new role for the teacher, and the implications for the skills of other educational actors (parents and children, managers of companies, educational and cultural establishments such as libraries or museums)
how to promote an awareness among SME managers of the need for continuous identification of areas in which their companies are short of skills and qualifications
how to help them to select or design suitable training measures for themselves and their staff
investigate the barriers to the Information Society’s transition to the learning society, including the obstacles to a European market place for the provision of education and training
The 128-member group was set up by the Commission last year to provide a new and authoritative source of reflection, debate and advice on the many issues raised by the rapid spread of the new digital technologies.
Ms Birgitta Carlson, President of the Forum, said that the report’s essential conclusion was that " people are the initiators and as important as markets in achieving a successful transition to the Information Society. If we take their needs into account as citizens, as consumers and as human beings, then we shall strengthen Europe’s economic development and enjoy greater prosperity and a better quality of life."
After carrying out their detailed analysis and discussion in six working groups whose individual reports have published as a supplement to the annual report members of the Forum have concluded that "neither our people, nor our institutions nor most of our companies are really prepared for the new technologies. For as long as it lasts, this state of unreadiness will be a serious handicap on Europe’s capacity to gain the potential benefits they offer - higher economic growth, more employment and a better quality of life."
The Forum’s members are drawn from: industrial, business and consumer users of the new information and communications technologies; from civil society representatives such as trade unions, employers organisations and youth groups; from the worlds of publishing, broadcasting, software production and information services; from telecoms and other network operators and from the European institutions.
Copies of the Forum’s first Annual Report and of the supplementary report (working group’s reports) can be obtained from the:
Information Society Forum Secretariat European Commission,
Information Society Activity Centre, 200 Rue de la Loi,
BU 24 2/70,
B-1049 Brussels, Belgium
Fax: +32 2 295 06 88
E-mail: Fabrizia.derosa@bxl.dg13.cec.be
or from the WWW site: http://www.ispo.cec.be/infoforum/pub.html