Making Educational Resources More Accessible

By
Dr. James Spohrer, Apple Computer
John Wolpert, IBM Java Team

The WWW is an outstanding educational resource. Making this resource widely available to students could have a tremendous impact on education. Java is an important key to making the WWW more accessible--and that's not the only educational benefit of the Java environment.

Consider the Educational Object Economy (EOE). The EOE Web site is just one of the many freely-available educational resources on the WWW. The EOE supports a community of people working together to improve the quality and availability of Java-based educational objects. Educational objects in the EOE library are all freely available to ensure the broadest possible accessibility. We have received email from as far away as an island in the Indian Ocean praising the availability of educational objects found in the EOE. These objects include nearly a thousand interactive applications ranging from Life Sciences applets teaching the flocking behavior of birds to applications that present in-depth world history or geographical content in fascinating, interactive ways. The WWW has improved access to educational resources for millions--nearly billions.

Why is Java important for improving accessibility? For one thing, Java runs everywhere (it's inter-operable). Inter-operability means that users are not locked into a single kind of operating system. In addition, Java goes beyond static text and pictures to provide dynamic simulations and tools to support interactive learning. The availability of dynamic educational objects, such as animations, simulations, and interactive tools, means that a wider variety of learning styles can be met than with static media types alone. Furthermore, Java promotes the use of component software objects that can be mixed and matched and combined in diverse ways to cheaply and efficiently create new learning experiences. These object-oriented components allow educational software to be built more quickly and at lower cost.

From a global perspective, the economics here are profound. There is no question that the computing environment in schools around the world remains dramatically heterogeneous. Expensive cross-platform development of important educational tools is cost-prohibitive, considering the large number of educators both in the US and abroad who are unable to pay for such services. Likewise, Windows-only applications (or even applets that require platform-specific controls such as ActiveX) deny access to millions of students who don't have (and sometimes don't want) Wintel machines.

Finally, Java was designed from the start with secure Web distribution of software in mind. Web distribution provides for the broadest, fastest, cheapest possible means of getting educational resources into as many hands as possible.

Inter-operable, dynamic, object-oriented, Web-distributable educational resources are key attributes that will ultimately make Java-based educational resources more accessible to more learners than any media since print and television. What's more, because Java is syntactically similar to C++, there is a large and growing base of developers capable of doing the necessary coding to bring educational applications to life.

One could make an argument in light of all this that learning Java will become a basic skill for a wide range of students, not only for programmers. Educators are beginning to recognize that today's students need to learn logic, or "higher order process skills," at an early age. Learning Java helps students develop their logical or "object oriented cognitive skills," an understanding of how, for example, the "objects" of car, truck, and sports car relate to each other. This notion of objects and their relationships, of classification and sub-classification, is important in disciplines ranging from art to chemistry, and it is fundamental to the Java environment. Aside from the obvious advantage of knowing enough Java to extend one's work opportunities, the process of learning Java may help students think better. The skills it teaches are crucial, for logic is the essence of cognition, and language is its tool.

The power of the press was just becoming apparent a few centuries ago as the Bill of Rights was being created. Certainly, politicians and businesses today are aware of the media power of television after just a few decades of use. Today, Java-based WWW resources are only a couple of years old, and yet their impact in education is already being felt around the world.



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