VISIT REPORT

SOCRATES-ARION visit no: 21. 01

Bertalan Komenczi
H-3200 Gyöngyös, Attila u. 12.
Tel./Fax: 36- 37/313433
Email:kb@berze-nagy.sulinet.hu
ARI-1998-HU-36

Introduction

The world is small: In the hall of Hotel Kemijärvi I was received by a sculpture of a Hungarian artist. The world, thanks to a highly developed transportation technology, is becoming a village of global size, wrote the Hungarian emigrant writer, Sandor Marai in 1951, 11 years before Marshall McLuhan wrote about the global village. It is true that the main arteries of traffic in our global world occur on "virtual" (information highway) in the form of bits and not matter. In reality today in Lapland this highway is often an information side road, like in many other parts of the world, which fits the ironical write out in full the well known acronym (www) world wide waiting. But the future is closer than we think, and I believe that this moved us to visit a remote country to study distance education. The fast pace of progress in telecommunications and computer sciences, and through their union, the new possibilities for communication and information access, have broadly influenced most areas of all of our lives, possibly in a fundamental manner. The fast and expansive changes are expressions of the information revolution. The term "information society" is indicative of the radical changes in our "informational environment". Especially dramatic changes are expected in education, learning, training and adult education. It is thought that these new technologies, and the possibilities that come about when using them, will challenge the traditional educational system and its standardised methods. What can we expect, hope and what should we think twice about? How can we prepare for the information age? In what way can education help? Many of us are interested in these kinds of questions.

Distant Education

In the use of information and communication technology, Finland is a front-runner in the world. It must be recognized and makes us wonder, how this small nation of farmers struggling under the arctic climate, became one of the leading high-tech countries. This is due, to more than a small extent, to their excellent educational system. To continue at this high level, ever increasing international cooperation is required. As Makku Lima from the Educational Ministry says: "Before the expansion of cooperation in education, a student taking on a role with international responsibilities was only able to learn the job inside the company. Now the situation is different and every graduate can expect to gain international experience in one way or another. They will need to cope with foreign cultures and may be expected to work abroad occasionally. Higher education should equip students for these type of responsibilities.

The Finnish educational system is uniform all over the country and obeys the following pattern:

• Preschool education, day care
• Lower stage Comprehensive Schools, 7yrs. - 12yrs. old. School year 1-6.
• Upper stage Comprehensive Schools, 12yrs. - 16yrs. old. School year 7-9, plus
• optional year 10
• Upper Secondary Schools (lukio/gymnasium) and Vocational School 16yrs. - 19yrs.
• Universities and Vocational Colleges (AMK)

In Lapland education also has a strategic value. EDUCATION AS PROVINCIAL A KEY FACTOR - the title of this program deals with the future development of this province and was published not long ago. Some important goals in this program, which are involve information technology and distance education are the following:

• realisation of teaching quality projects especially in secondary education
• realisation of the information society project in the lappish schools
• distance education and information centres for every municipality
• research projects at the University of Lapland to utilise distance education and information technology

The promotion of the accessibility of education will be based in the future on the utilisation of information technology and telecommunications and on the arrangements of teaching through virtual and networked teaching. The need for provincial co-operation has become obvious in the planning and co-ordination of education Due to its geographical location, Lapland has unique possibilities to develop the internationalisation of its education all the way starting from the comprehensive schools. Skills related to internationalisation must be offered in the form of increased educational services to Lapp enterprises. The further education - infrastructure development of the region start out from the following positive conditions:

• Access to education with the existing networks of schools.
• Good standard of equipment in the schools
• Educational technology has been utilised right from the lowest school level.
• Comprehensive Network of adult education centres and libraries.
• General educational level of the population is good.
• Highly educated teachers

Kemijärvi

The town which we visited, Kemijärvi, one of the five Eastern Lapp municipalities, with its 12 thousand inhabitants is a small town to us, but is one of the largest in Lapland. It is Finland's northernmost town, situated north of the arctic circle. It is 80 km from the Lapp capital Rovaniemi. During our visit the temperature in the evening fell to -25 degrees Celsius. The hours of daylight were short. Our host was the Department of Education and Culture. Erkii Taskila director , his assistants, Sari Lassila and Paula Ahola and some teachers of the town school, the heads of the Youth and Cultural Institutions of the town, were the people who helped us.
Currently in Kemijärvi there are:

• 11 Lower Stage Comprehensives varying in size from 15 pupils plus 2 teachers to 207 pupils plus 7 teachers.
• 2 Upper Stage Comprehensives with 218 pupils plus 22 teachers and 250 pupils plus 22 teachers.
• 1School for the Handicapped with 56 pupils plus 8 teachers.
• Upper Secondary school with 350 students and 23 teachers
• Vocational School with 500 students and 42 teachers
• Music college
• Open College and 1 Adult Education Center for adult education
• All the schools provide a free lunch and transport.

The challenge for Kemijärvi and the surrounding area are not different than those of Lapland as a whole.

• 21 % unemployment.
• High emigration to Southern Finland.
• Some teacher recruitment difficulties.
• Examination results are not perceived as being as good in Lapland as in Southern Finland
• Large numbers of small schools, made worse by falling birth rates. The death rate now exceeds the birth rate. 27.8% of the population is retired with the school age population falling.
• Widespread rural population.

The new means for information and telecommunications can help solve these problems. The local, regional, national and international computer networks make it possible to develop an open and flexible virtual environment, which can counteract the handicaps brought by low population density and dispersion. There is a Lapland network planned - as long as it can provide sufficient content - which can assist in the accomplishment of the stated goals.

Schools

Joutsijärvi primary school
A total of 2 teachers and 19 pupils are in the school. A 10 year old boy shows the visitors his self-made home page. In this school computers were built into the school environment without any problems, being one of the available tools. The pupils show a High skill level when working with the computer. While we were there, they installed the software for a sound-card, so that we could listen to the belling of a reindeer from a CD-ROM.

The principal of the school, while intensively using IT. The principal told us that their every-day educational practice is organized around the constructive pedagogical theory. Such a small school is an ideal place to use the constructive pedagogical method and it provides good possibilities for individually fitted, self-paced learning. At the same time it helps to solve the contradiction between different pupil requirements and few teachers.

In the near future the connection between the home computer and school server might be generally implemented, which would make the organization of many new individually fitted learning methods possible. In Lapland almost 50% of the households already have computers. The bandwidth and the availability of network access is growing by the month. The real duty is to develop essential and flexibly useable learning content, and to completely digitize the school material and learning programs. The development of intelligent software that can diagnose the entry level of the students, help with their learning process, measure and grade their progress, will require a lot of time and money. To utilize the possibilities of the new information technologies will require broad-spread research in the fields of pedagogy, system organization and psychology, not mentioning the requirement to additionally educate and train the teachers. This includes very much work and will cost more than the hardware and the leasing of the network lines.

Secondary Schools
A video conference in the Kemijärvi upper secondary school. First the colleagues of Abdou Oudjedi, a French member of our work group, contacted us from Limoges in France. Afterwards, PH, who was with us on the first day of our visit, greeted us from her Helsinki office. The headmaster Timo Toukomies (on the left of the picture) is outlining plans of how this system could be utilized for his students in international connections. On the large screen we see AL and colleagues, on the smaller inset the French high school teacher. To what extent will this possibility substitute for direct face to face communication? The Upper Secondary School gymnasium (http://www.kemijarvi.fi/lukio) prospect writes it in the following manner: As of today (in December 1998), we haven't started any friendship projects with schools in other countries, but we are hoping to find the right partners. Keeping this in mind we look positively into any new international contacts, in order to be able to start a fruitful two-way communication, beneficial to both parties. So, if you are interested in starting this kind of partnership with a upper secondary school situated north of the arctic circle, please let us know about you!

In one of the computer romms of the the Kemijärvi Vocational Institute ( vocational school ), from left to right: Abou Oudjedi, Gisli Magnusson, Piia Heinämäki, Manfred Buhl, Andrew Sortwell and Ilkka Korkalo, our host. As a vice principal he has a right to be proud of the modernly equipped and exemplary working institute. The lower slide stems from a PowerPoint presentation, all of which is downloadable from the internet version of the visit report.

Impressions

Learn your child´s Future -

The information society is already here

We visited a project at Kuumaniemi Comprehensive School. Schools are participating in a national project "Finland to the Information Society" that will train parents in the use of computer aided learning. As they themselves learn, parents meet the parents of their children's friends, taking part in a learning programme that will enable them to help their children. (http://www.huominen.net/uutiset.html).

In Finnland the foreign films are not synchronized. This is quite useful for a small country, because the children hear the foreign language as used in specific situations. At the same time - until they understand the language - they are forced to read quickly in their own language. It is also an advantage, that the actors are heard using their own voices. Knowing that Hungarians are weak in foreign languages, it is worth considering that at least a few foreign films should be broadcast without synchronizing the audio. As DVD-ROM programs become more broadspread it would be advisable to have the original audio with Hungarian subtitles as an option on every disc.

The Oulu University has developed a package called Campus Futurum which is seen as having considerable potential for supporting lifelong learning in Finland and the wider world. The university is developing a virtual library as part of a national project. Video conferencing is seen as being an integral part of an education service - one tool among many. The key is seen to be lying within an integrated package of e-mail, home pages, video conferencing, tutorial sessions, books, etc. (http://www.edtech.oulu.fi/proto).

The library equipped with computers becomes the central information providing service, the center of learning, self-instruction and information, where books and electronic devices - the Gutenberg galaxy and the Neumann universum - are mutually supporting and helping the work of students and teachers in a complementary manner. The Internet increases the prospects of the library users immensely. The orientation in the information explosion requires the existence and/or promotion of a critical approach, common sense and a stable value system. It is advisable to use the central position of the library to demonstrate intellectual, aesthetic and ethical directions to the students. The library possesses the most practical and convenient techniques of acquiring data, information and knowledge. Using this skill will become indispensable in the next century.

Report

The Arion group at work. In the small conference room of the Kemijärvi the first draft of the visit report is in preparation. In the foreground Maria from Portugal, and toward the back Ria from Belgium, Judit from Hungary and Elena from Spain. We have all enjoyed our visit very much. We have benefitted from seeing education in a different part of Europe, in understanding some of the challenges facing an education service in a remote region and we thank everybody in Kemijärvi and the Arion service for making our visit possible. Many new friendships and partnerships have been and are being developed. We recommend that the EU should continue to play a catalytic role in projects to harness the Internet as a learning tool to enable us to work together without reinventing the wheel.

Doubts and Connections

Note the following sentence:
To be able to appropriately use the information and telecommunication systems, significant changes in the workings of the schools, in the teaching-learning methods and organization of teaching materials are needed. I wrote this sentence in this way on purpose. In this form, the attitude that the introduction of information technology in the teaching environment of the school is the primary and supreme goal is clearly obvious.
We often meet up with similar revealing sentences. For example in Esther Dyson's new book she writes: The only possibility for the children to communicate with each other would be to seriously spur on widespread computer use in the school. Such sentences reveal our prejudices and seem to justify Neil Postman's worries: "The technology is here or will be; we must use it because it is here; we will become the kind of people the technology requires us to be; and, whether we like it or not, we will remake our institutions to accomodate the technology. All of this must happen because it is good for us , but in any case, we have no choice."
The following sentence - also from Dyson's book - illustrates the computer enthusiasm of some teachers: "...teachers would like it very much, that computers and the internet be openly available in the schools, but they don't know exactly for what it should be and how it should be used." Could Theodor Roszak be correct, in viewing the computerization of the school with deep scepticism? "The computer has entered the schools on a wave of commercial opportunism. One would be hard-pressed to find another time when a single industry was able to intrude its interest so aggressively upon the schools of the nation - and to find such enthusiastic receptivity ( or timid surrender) on the part of educators."……….For the most part, the schools (or mainly trend-conscious administrators and anxious parents, less so teachers) have responded with the promptness and gullibility of well-trained consumers to the commercial pressure of the computer industry." I hope that I am not wrong when I think that the needs of the knowledge society in the XXI. century require the changing of our educational practice. For this change the rational but subordinate use of information technology can help us. Maybe the most important new requirement is the development of the willingness and the abilities for electronic communication. The most important new means for this is the network connected computer. We are dealing with the following communicational forms:

• asynchronous text-based Computer Mediated Communication - (T-CMC, Email)
• synchronous text-based Computer Mediated Communication - (T-CMC Chat)
• asynchronous audio-visual Computer Mediated Communication - (AV-CMC Ftp)
• synchronous audio-visual Computer Mediated Communication - (Videoconference)
• personal, face to face communication - (F2F)

In the relationships between the different school's student groups the individual communication forms should be in harmony. To make sure that these connections have the expected results, many conditions have to be met: hardware, netware, software, orgware and mindware. The first three levels are technical conditions, the latter two are organizational and content elements. The latter demand lots more financial and intellectual support.

Perspectives

I think that we cannot even imagine many things which will become a reality tomorrow. The future is nearer to us than we think. Characteristically, Bill Gates had to rewrite his book after its publication in 1995, because he didn't take into account the explosive growth of the Internet and its popularity. It is remarkable that the rapid revolution or evolution of information technology confuses even those who are the primary movers in the process. It seems that Arthur C. Clarke is right when he writes that there is only one certainty about the future, and that is that it will be different than what we can fathom.
An elementary concern for schools should be that they adapt as early as possible to the challenges of our era. Parents are deeply convinced that computer skills will play an important role in the career of their children. The traditional educational system progressively loses its prerogative that it is the only representative of knowledge transfer. Lewis J. Perelman's much disputed book "The School is Out" tries to convince the American taxpayers that the new information media and the system of public education are incompatible and therefore, in the interest of healthy economic growth, the latter should simply be scrapped. Seymour Papert in his newly published book emphasizes the importance of the learning-at-home culture as compared to the poor effectiveness of the school-style learning. He discusses how parents could effectively promote the computerized home-learning of their children.
Most futurologists believe that the new advances upgrade the teacher's profession. Bill Gates has the same opinion when he writes in his previously cited book: " ...The future of teaching looks bright. Educators who bring energy and creativity to a classroom will thrive."
I myself agree with the futurologists and think that the value of teachers and schools will increase exactly because of the challenges of our era. However, instant access to data and information doesn't mean that knowledge has been acquired automatically. Those researchers who dreamed about and realized the technology of the information age, from Bush to Tim Berbers-Lee, possessed great intellects and deep mental abilities. The Internet and the web have been created by the cooperation of knowledge workers in university circles who were engaged in basic research. To use the world wide collective knowledge system intelligently, one has to have excellent intellectual prerogatives. These skills cannot be acquired by simply sitting in front of the computer and surfing the Internet. The philosopher Jürgen Mittelstrass states a profound truth when he writes:
"The information superhighway actually presupposes that the mind is independent and has an ability to judge. It doesn't create it....and that is possibly our problem."

Everybody needs an "a priori" inner web: his or her personal neural net. This is essentially a hypermedia system that makes us suitable to take advantage of the indefinite possibilities of the outer web. The teacher may be the master craftsman who determines what the minimal contents necessary for an effective inner web should be and how they should be utilized. The school is the place where all this can happen with the right timing and with the appropriate sequence. We should mention that due to the current advance of the user-friendly graphic programs it is not primarily important that the utilization of computers is learned first. The trend is that the machines will accommodate to the humans. It will be much more important to have a well-rounded education and to know the lingua franca of the information age, the English language. Another reason which makes the teacher indispensable is an increasing demand for an assembly of properties: curiosity, motivation, openness, sensitivity, inner stability and a determinedly positive value system. In order to acquire such properties, the teacher can do a lot. Through the study of multimedia programs and adaptive teaching software I gained a strong appreciation of the value of a good teacher. He produces a superb multimedia presentation.
He associates high-level interactivity to the visual and auditory elements, creating a teaching program accommodated to the cognitive capabilities of the students. He applies a large number of continuously updated software, and in addition, he demonstrates societal values and gives personal examples. He praises, encourages, consoles and yes, if it is necessary, he disciplines and penalizes.
While we are talking about technology, we should not forget that our purpose is the increase of educational standards and efficiency. The efficiency does not depend exclusively and primarily on the technology, but it is a function of the entire educational environment. It is desirable to realize this in these days, when "the technology is now- but, alas, the money is not", as an educator from a richer country than ours says. During our progressive development we have to think of alternative and complementary strategies. It is possible that "softer" and less expensive methods are also effective in some areas. It is possible that the employment of a good school psychologist means more than a few new computers. It is possible that if we enable our students to learn more effectively, a substantial improvement can be achieved even without computers. It is also possible that the new educational methods, which are associated with computer usage, will be more effectively utilized with fewer computers but with a better prepared and appropriately motivated teacher community. It is certain that the explosive spread of the new technology will accelerate the transformation of the traditional educational system. The thinking and planning in a complex learning environment and the corresponding practice gains importance every day. Perhaps the most significant factor is that we induce the ability for independent knowledge acquisition in the children and we make them able to renew their skills during their entire lifetime. The general spread of computers in schools brings up many questions. There is widespread confusion regarding how the new great possibilities in a rapidly changing environment can be utilized efficiently. There is a feverish search for solutions. We should be aware that an overly enthusiastic approach towards the new technologies can produce disappointments. I am convinced that there is no royal way to the acquisition of productive skills. Still the most important link in the school is the one that leads the student to the appropriate page in the textbook. We do not know what the future will bring. When substantially new technologies are introduced, it is usually expected that the human condition will be perfected and improved. Is it possible that this hope will be fulfilled this time?

The personal results of the study

This visit was very interesting and educational for me. The name of Kemijärvi was an empty term before my trip, and Lappland a distant and exotic arctic land. Now the name of the city is full of meaning - people, teaching colleagues, pupils and schools bring to mind many fully developed and potentially promising relationships.

There is a possibility to maintain an internet connection with the group and our hosts. Abu Uodjedi from France, will prepare the web site of this visit.

On my home page I am also adding a personal report about our study in Kemijärvi. From here, there is a possibility to download my essay in englis translation "On line - The Information Society and Education". Shortly, I will translate two presentations of mine, that are already on the internet, into English. The titles are: "Personal computer - The Birth of a Paradigm" and "Missing link? Virtual Mesoworld: School Library". Together with the principals of the Kemijärvi high school and the Ramsey Abbey School, we are planning to develop a three-sided school relationship.

Ms Linda Houston is a librarian and I am interested and deal with the theoretical and practical issues in organizing school libraries in the information society. Hereby, we can help to develop the relationship between Northern Irish and Hungarian school librarians. In order to support this, we will also prepare an English version of our library web site.

Considering, that the Gyöngyös Academic High School is recognized nationwide as an example of the practical use of information technology in teaching, we see the possibility for us to become Hungarian hosts of Arion. The theme could be: Open educational environment - open school library.

In summary, I believe that the Arion program reached its goals and further spread its net, which is a requirement for the useful European cooperation in the field of education.