Creating an Electronic Village.

Recently, two educators and I watched a 10-year-old examine a new atlas of the United States. The atlas was not a book, but a computer software program promising to show any location within the 50 states, no matter how small the community.

The youngster sat at the keyboard and typed the information provided: state name, zip code, street name, and number. As a large map appeared on the computer screen, the boy adroitly used a mouse to focus on an exact location within the city or town. By manipulating his mouse, he could bring up a portion of the map ever so slightly to the east, west, south, or north of a spot. Once he had zeroed in on the correct target, he printed a map of the location.

He showed he clearly is ready to be a member of an "electronic village."

Far-Reaching Plan

An electronic village is not necessarily a small place. The term can apply to a location as large as Manhattan or as small as Abercrombie, N.D. (population 260). Most communities already are electronic villages to an extent. We have telephones, faxes, televisions, and individual computers.

In fall 1994, more than 400 citizens of Ridgewood, N.J., attended a series of four introductory sessions about the state of our school district's technology. Then, a group of 26 residents and educators volunteered to devise a technology plan for the 21st century. Their 131-page report was approved by a review panel of 53 other citizen volunteers. It described the current state and anticipated the future technology needs of the schools and town.

The plan calls for modern classrooms. Each will include computers able to access voice and video as well as print. The computers within one building will be linked with those in other schools and to homes and other buildings in town. All classrooms will have a TV monitor and a conference phone. The two middle schools and high school will have their own TV studio.

The plan also calls for a community center where residents can learn how to use the technology. The center, equipped with computers similar to those in the schools, will be staffed by a professional arid student volunteers.

The classroom or home will become a truly phenomenal library. Students no longer will work their way through a library card catalogue. They and other residents will have the materials to do the kind of research that once was possible only at the most sophisticated libraries. Students can ask the computer to search virtually any topic. The 21st century student in an electronic village no longer will worry about finding information but how to understand and analyze what he finds.

Another reason to connect computers within a town involves the software that children use in school. Currently, a child working on lessons to reinforce basic math skills must sign on at the same computer each day. What is envisioned is a child starting a lesson at school and completing it at her home computer--or maybe even going on to another lesson at home.

Easy Communication

The technology plan embraces a new form of communication. We hope to build a network of persons willing to share their particular expertise with others on screen. Electronic mail will provide another way for parents to get in touch with teachers and vice versa. This mail can be sent at any hour.

In addition, schools will be able to post on electronic bulletin boards various information for students and parents-everything from daily homework assignments to announcements about concerts and sporting events. The town hall can announce communitywide events. The hospital can describe its services. Local real estate offices can post listings. What can be included is limited only by our imaginations and the time it takes to compose a message.

You may grant the new computers and still wonder why the plan calls for a TV monitor in each classroom. Students learn from producing in a studio their own news each day, news piped into every classroom. They learn which news is important to cover, how to write and edit it, how to speak into a microphone without shaking, how to film the events and reporters, and how to work under pressure of a daily deadline. The students watching the news learn respect for their peers who make and produce it.

Human Costs

Implicit in the plan is the idea that to deny these changes today would be equivalent to denying electric lights, telephones, and radios when those improvements first appeared on the horizon. We dare not do it. If our students are to thrive in the 21st century, they must know how to use the technology of an electronic village. The best jobs will require this knowledge.

The 10-year-old boy described earlier lives in a town that, like Ridgewood, is debating whether to become an electronic village. His parents, enthusiastic supporters of the concept, recently upgraded their home computer. They are not as concerned about the dollars they must spend today as they are about the future cost to their son if the investment in the new technology is not made now.

As school system leaders, we must think about whether we can afford to reject the machines that promise to make all of our lives easier, make us better educated and more community-minded, and prepare our children for the future.