March 1994 — Editorial

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Editorial (untitled)

At the International Symposium on Technology and Society, "Technology: Whose Cost? Whose Benefits?" held in October at George Washington University, it was stated technology will change the way society functions and it will be essential for everyone to understand benefits, costs and value of the increased utilization of technology. Organizations use improved and faster ways to teach workers new jobs and problem solving skills using available technologies. Skill Dynamics, an IBM Company, published in 1993 an internal document entitled "A Vision of IBM Human Resource Performances in the Year 2000." The following succinctly summarizes New Directions in Education: Now The Year 2000 Plan by jobs Plan by skill Courses Instruction modules Traditional ISD Automated development Explicit evaluation Embedded measurement Culture dependent Automatic translation Limited media Multisensory Local catalogs Worldwide libraries Centralized Distributed Management-initiated Employee-initiated Education planning will be done by skill rather than by job; Instruction will be provided in modules rather than in courses; Courseware development will be automated via expert systems; Testing will be embedded and continuous rather than an explicit event; Modules will be multisensory, accommodating various learning styles; Networks will provide access to worldwide libraries of instructional modules rather than limiting an employee to local catalogs; Education will be truly distributed rather than under the central control of someone other than the learner; and Employees can initiate necessary education experiences themselves.
The New Literacy Demands for information literacy will continue the move towards a service economy, plus greater automation functions will also increase the need for a better educated and informed society. Educators must ask themselves how they can effectively prepare current and future generations to live and work in an Information Society. Information literacy should enable us not only to find facts and figures, but help us utilize and benefit from the increasing amount of information using appropriate technological tools.