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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