2.35 Most people recognise that changes in information and communication technologies are having profound effects on our society and our lives. Although it is important to recognise continuities as well as innovations, and some predictions of the speed or impact of change may have been exaggerated, there is no doubting their influence. Furthermore, while not all learning experiences involve investment in technology, many are beginning to require access to information technology equipment and the skills to use it.
2.36 The immediate challenge is to ensure that we also make best use of the existing technologies, particularly those which individuals and families have already invested in and are free at the point of use. We need to plan systematically for when other technologies will be more widely used and more widely available.
2.37 Learning is a way of understanding and responding to technological change. It is also a tool for learning itself. Technical progress in broadcasting, computing and communications, and continuing reductions in cost, will make it possible to offer people access to a wide range of high quality learning resources, wherever they are and overcoming many of the known barriers to widening participation of geography, place and distance. Video links, CD-ROMs and computers can make a great deal of difference to people's chances to access learning, whilst future applications of information technology and digital broadcasting will open up even greater possibilities to support lifelong learning. The creation of the University for Industry provides an ideal opportunity to carry these ideas forward.
2.38 The convergence of television, computing and telecommunications and the imminent arrival of digital television will soon allow many more broadcast channels. It will also allow information and interactive services to reach homes, learning centres and work places. Learning at home and outside conventional educational establishments will become more widespread, with implications for institutions, for teachers (as facilitators and creators of learning materials) and for individual learners. As the information superhighway becomes a reality and its use becomes a part of everyday life, so Government and its agencies and partners must ensure that all our people are able to use them. Increasingly, those who do not understand how to use these technologies will be excluded from active participation in civil and democratic society.
2.39 In advancing learning opportunities through these exciting new media, it would be unacceptable for the new learning technologies themselves to constitute a further and potentially even more fateful basis for social division, than already exists in gaining access to learning. New technologies have not yet reached many homes or adult learning centres at affordable prices. Some people will have the resources to provide for themselves, or will have access at work, but others will need to obtain access to technology in public places and networks of learning centres that are accessible and user friendly. Without these we risk a society divided between the information-rich and the information-poor. As the Government's own consultation paper on the National Grid for Learning puts it: "quality of access to lifelong learning will increasingly depend on the extent to which the widest possible range of institutions are able to offer ICT services and connections to the grid".
| Previous Challenge | Next Challenge | Return to Part Two |