ABSTRACT

The Information Age has arrived, and most societal institutions are experiencing profound changes as a result. The power of the electronic technologies that drive the information explosion continues to increase rapidly, while at the same time their cost continues to fall dramatically. Students need to develop a repertoire of heuristics for judging the reliability of information. True voice-recognition technology at affordable cost remains in the distant future, so the alphanumeric keyboard will continue to be the principle device by means of which information in the form of language is generated, retrieved, and communicated. Electronic technology has occasioned a re-examination of the mathematics curriculum. Clearly, the ubiquity of electronic calculators has made it less necessary the ability to perform with pencil and paper such tedious large calculations as long division and adding long columns of multi-digit numbers. Collaborative multi-disciplinary studies can have significant effects on the politics of the classroom and on the style of classroom interaction.