ABSTRACT
Summary: Of the many complex issues that the use of new technologies in education gives rise to, why and how the new technologies are to be deployed are the two most important, in that these constitute first-order questions. It is with these fundamental questions that this chapter is primarily concerned. How do the new technologies contribute to the education process? How does information technology relate to the rest of the curriculum? In other words, what is the rationale for using computer-based technologies in education? Particular reference is made to computers, at all main levels of education, in meeting the needs of individuals and of society.
Discussed first is the need for a rationale and the consequences for society at large if there are no clearly enunciated reasons for using computers in schools. In trying to develop a rationale, three key questions are then addressed: Who are the learners? What are they to learn? And why should they learn? From a consideration of these questions some of the major reasons advocated for using computers in education emerge. Thus a justification in the short term is arrived at, but it is also important to look ahead, and the chapter closes with a long-range view of possible computing developments in the remaining years of this century and the resulting implications for educational institutions.
Although computers receive major attention in this chapter, it is more accurate to refer to new technologies or computer-based technologies, since the discussion also centres on computer storage media, word processors, electronic message systems, videotex, communication satellites, and telecommunications generally. In what follows, the terms ‘computers’, ‘computer-based technologies’, information technology’, and the new technologies’, are used more or less interchangeably to refer to microelectronics-based technologies where computing and communications come together.
