A five-year-old sitting in front of a computer monitor is interacting with an on-screen zoo keeper who is feeding baby animals and giving a lesson in measuring. Nearby, a classmate is directing the movements of a computer-animated dog built from blocks that is teaching about combinations of shapes. On a third monitor a fellow student explores the properties of primary numbers with the computerized image of a boy blowing soap bubbles. All of these interactive lessons are being controlled by a single file-server computer, as are dozens of other lessons being shown on monitors throughout the school.
Just a few years ago such capabilities would have seemed many years away. But systems like this are already being used in some schools across the United States. To the extent that educators are able to use the full interactive capabilities of these powerful new devices, technology is already catalyzing the reinvention of schools.
Powerful learning systems are also showing up in homes. Today about a third of the households in the United States contain a personal computer of some kind, and purchases of hardware and software for home use are accelerating. Led by companies such as Broderbund Software Inc., Davidson & Associates, and the Learning Company, sales of home learning programs have been growing by 50 percent a year. With the entry of large firms like Nintendo, Microsoft, and Paramount into the home education market, sales of education software for the home are projected to surpass $1 billion annually by the end of the decade.
The market for software in the schools is even larger. In the 1993-94 school year, schools spent over $600 million on educational software, and the amount is projected to grow by 20 percent per year.
However, steady growth does not mean an easy road for the companies trying to serve the school market. Funding for public education is tight and comes from many different sources. The market is also fragmented and diverse, which makes it difficult for companies to target education customers. The best school software is different from home software, taking advantage of groups of students and teachers to promote communication and collaboration. And a suspicion of technology lingers among many educators, particularly among those who have seen highly touted technologies fail in the past.
Parents have been an important prod to many schools. As they buy digital technologies for use in the home, they see how significant these technologies are in the lives of their children. They then begin to ask why the same capabilities cannot be offered in schools.
Yet the job of outfitting schools with the most recent technologies will not be easy. Today U.S. schools have about 3 million computers installed, an average of about 30 per school. But many are older and cannot run the more sophisticated and interactive software being developed today. The numbers of more powerful computers, CD-ROM drives, videodisk players, and network connections are increasing, but not at a rate that will enable most students to use these technologies. Similarly, sophisticated educational software that takes advantage of the capabilities of new systems is just starting to appear.
Given the pace at which the market is changing, many school systems are reluctant to make a strong commitment to educational technologies. But their reluctance is misplaced. The rapid rate of change today is an opportunity, not a problem. The objective for schools should not be to buy into a given technology and then set about using that technology to do what they have always done. Schools need to use constantly changing technology to achieve their underlying objective of preparing students to live in a constantly changing world.
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With more than 23 million computers in American homes, the consumer demand for educational and entertainment products and services has created a substantial economic market that is surpassing the professional and business markets for new information technologies. This new and quickly growing market is supporting new ventures and services and is transforming the companies that helped create the information revolution.
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