Table of Contents | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Chapter 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Conclusions | References

Chapter 4 The Technology of Learning

Introduction

"Technology for Education's sake" is not an oft heard phrase. More the opposite, where the education must fit within the limitations of the available technology, is true. It is not that the current computing technology can't deliver what it was designed for but that it is almost totally inappropriate for the coming information age and communications revolution.

4.1 How Much Technology?

The current learning theories of the time dominate the teaching/learning process. These learning theories manifest themselves in instructional techniques and practices. With the advent of digital technologies in education much time and effort has been expended investigating their possibilities and in trying to find the right fit for these new technologies in the educational model using either existing, or new, instructional practices.

The current pioneers are introducing digital technologies into the educational process at a time when the technology is still quite crude in comparison to the full bandwidth of the typical classroom (Tiffin and Rajasingham,1996). During this introductory period, with little supporting evidence of correct usage, instructional practice can easily be dominated and directed by technology.

When the technology of education dominates, learning theory is supplanted with instructional practice which is technology dependent. This is the current situation where the learner has virtually no choice over either the technology or instructional method used in most schools or universities. The introduction of (poor) technology into education can easily have a constrictive rather than empowering effect.

If we could then conceive a time in the future when educational technology is so good as to be perceived as absent or transparent, (much the same way we currently take some modern cars for granted), then learning theory would again direct the instructional process. This could be considered effectively a post-technology period.

It could well be that a post-technology period comes about in education in one of two ways. Either technology gets so good that it is effectively transparent, or people reject the technology forcing it to disappear. Either way, educators and learners could then once again concentrate on the process they have come together for. Which of these polemic outcomes actually prevails is the source of much debate.

4.2 Technology - Process or Product?

From the myriad of readings available on 'educational technology' it would be easy to assume that there was a common, clear understanding of the term by all involved in its development, distribution and use. Though as Romiszowski (1981) points out, both components of the term are in dispute. Education itself is a very subjective and therefore much debated topic but he also suggests that why the term technology is so debated, is merely due to misunderstanding of the term. He goes on to define technology as:

"The creative application of science to industrial (or any practical) purposes. ...... The definition above is a process definition: it is something that is done. Furthermore, it is something that people do by applying what they know, and they do it creatively. Yet for some, technology is a product rather than a process. It is something which exists. You can see it, touch it, measure it. We note this in the recently coined high technology, intermediate technology, low technology continuum ........" (Romiszowski, 1981:11)

Thus the product versus process confusion has seeped well into the community, though the product argument is more prevalent, because as Ellis points out, a likely definition of educational technology will lead to a list of active and passive devices ranging from satellite fed computers to pencil and paper (Ellis,1994).

4.2.1 Educational Technology

So, while the behavioural psychologists, learning theorists and instructional designers may be thinking process, what they deliver to teachers and trainers, are products. Parents and politicians, though, do not fully understand educational processes, such as possible learning theory advances brought on by better communications. Hence there is a strong reluctance to fund and embrace technology, particularly in schools, which is a direct response to the perils spelt out below:

"It is perhaps an understandable human error to pass from the criticism of some poor products to a general criticism and rejection of the process. Such a rejection of technology has occurred in the minds of some people. Technology is seen as a monster which threatens all the values of society, a dehumanising influence which must be resisted." (Romiszowski,1981:12)

And in some cases Romiszowski's sarcasm gets borne out. When government funding of technology is lacking or poorly implemented institutions must seek sponsorships and alliances which creates:

" a relatively new triad consisting of education, markets, and information technology ....... charity from business, rather than taxation of business, puts power in the hands of business to set the agenda for education." (Kenway et al., 1994)

4.2.2 Digital Technology - Entry Requirements

What is the lowest common denominator or the entry level information appliance for the information age? It is any personal computing device capable of text and graphical input and display, connected to a global network either directly or via a local area network and hence capable of electronic communication. The average network capable mid-nineties computer or digital telephony system.

It is not:

analogue it is digital;

stand-alone audio-visual technology;

stand-alone `multi-media' PCs;

CD-ROM or VideoDisc;

any device or software program that can not communicate with other devices or information systems.

These are industrial age devices and stratagems. Some would consider the CD-ROM as an information age device but it should be seen like the stand-alone desktop computer as the pinnacle of the industrial age. It is an electro-mechanical device which uses static media and is incapable of interactive communication.

4.3 Computing - Science or Art?

Whilst desktop computers get faster and cheaper every few months, desktop computing has advanced little in the past twenty years. Computers are a product. Computing is a process. We have fallen in love with the product but almost forgotten the process.

Computing is many things. It is a science. It is a science which studies itself, with itself to improve itself. It is a process where in simple terms, data is input, computed and output. It has many levels of complexity and study, from the pushing of ones and zeros around logic buses, to the calculation of a spreadsheet to the presentation of an audiovisual display. It therefore has many possible functions such as traffic counting to automatic banking to communication and entertainment. It is an art, where the insight of the designer can be encapsulated in the process or function. Computing can therefore illicit many human emotions such as wonder, contempt, frustration, boredom etc. The problem is, computing was doing all those things a long time ago. It now just does them faster. Unfortunately, like the concept of original sin, all the flaws of the initial designs are still with us.

Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems noted in an address to the Australian National Press Club recently:

" If you don't think that the anthropologists are going to look back on the 1980s and 1990s and say there was no innovation during that time, think about how similar a 1980 DOS Lotus 123 computer is in terms of productivity to your current full blown Pentium Pro NT Microsoft Word computer. They're within a per cent of each other in terms of utility and function ...... I think we're going backwards on the desktop ... in terms of actual utility - lots of activity but not a lot of utility." (McNealy,1996)

The above is a direct result of being obsessed with the product while ignoring the process. We are obsessed with the technology. This is nothing new for a male dominated computer industry and science built on empiricism where one buys the product based upon a subjective notion which tries to relate the speed of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) in megahertz to ease of use and overall satisfaction. All mention of the cryptic operating system and poor interface devices, incompatibilities, in-built redundancies or lack of functionality is avoided.

4.3.1 Steam Train to Internet

The analogy of a group of steam engineers (all male) standing around Watt and Bolton's engine in the late eighteenth century murmuring "caaw, look at that, pounds per square inch, pounds per square inch" compares to a group of computer scientists and systems engineers (mostly male) standing around the latest CPU on the market murmuring "caaw, look at that, megahertz, megahertz". This almost schoolboy like idolatry hardly compares with the actual experience of computing for most people which is still one of sheer frustration where they are the central character in a dream, in which the product just never catches the promise.

To consider the computer's strength as a machine or as providing "ownership of the means of production" (Logan,1996) is a legacy of the industrial society. A role more in keeping with the information age sees the primary purpose of computing as a communication. This then renders computers as a failure. When they are used as a computational tool they are successful. If education is about communication, then we will have to consider carefully the role of the computer.

Most of the components of the current computer systems we use today were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The primary notion of a kinaesthetic input device (the keyboard) and a visual output device (cathode-ray tube) has not changed. The computational piece in the middle has improved greatly but not because of advances in operating system or interface design but because of improvements with hardware. These hardware improvements though, have not resulted in comparable increases in useability or functionality to the user. Still, unlimited possibilities are promised by hardware manufacturers who present their plastic integrated circuits in advertisements featuring exotic locations. Unfortunately they give no clue or evidence of how to achieve this utopia for the end user. Meanwhile the spread of computers has been steady but not as complete as predicted because they still fail as a communications tool.

What happened to the steam engine to make it useful to all of society and not just the engineers? Someone added wheels and called it a train. Enter the Internet. With the advent of a partial global communications system we have put wheels on the computer. Now it can go somewhere! Albeit, to a mainly white Euro centric audience initially, but a truly global system is emerging.

4.3.2 The Three Eras of Computing

When Logan (1996) discussed the paradigm shift from Era I to Era II computing he was either not cognisant of, or failed to grasp that, Era III computing was already occurring. Logan (1996:178) cites Tapscott and Caston (1993) who describe Era I computing as the period dominated by the mainframe and Era II computing being dominated by the micro-computer. While they consider the shift from Host-based to Network-based systems as a paradigm change they fail to notice that the real change was from Host to Distributed-Host and the network was merely the change agent. As suggested above, computing didn't change, just the computers. Networks have been around in business and higher education for many years but it wasn't until peer to peer networks heralded Era II computing as the period where it became possible to construct programs and develop content independently of the host. This allowed new activities such as the desktop publishing revolution to eventuate away from the restrictive practices of Host-based computer systems.

Era III computing is a modern echo of Era I computing with some subtle yet crucial differences. Era III computing is about access. It builds on the technology developments of the previous two eras to allow the asynchronous usage of messaging and information systems from most parts of the world at any time. The host will still store much of the world's data and the personal computer will still be used to develop and manipulate much of that data but the new devices such as the Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), Network Computer (NC) and Information Appliances, in conjunction with the convergence and digital conversion of existing technologies such as telephony and television, will be used to access that information. Figure 4.1 summarises this triad.

Figure 4.1 The Eras of Computing
Table

With 1996 estimates of people in the world who have access to a computer running at around 5-6% it is predicted that the growth in computer usage will not be via personal computers as we know them but via access devices. The most important factor in this new era is not the role of the device but the role of the network system which creates new possibilities and while users will still be (transparently) interacting with hosts and servers at some point they are in reality shifting from client-server computing to client-network computing.

4.3.3 Client-Network Computing

The logo of computer manufacturer Sun Microsystems reads - "The network is the computer". By entering the network the process dominates and the product used for access diminishes in importance. The user is enmeshed in process. The concept of continually navigating new spaces or revisiting existing spaces requires that the space can handle asynchronous, or on-demand communication and access to data. This requires both a static and dynamic component which existing broadcast technologies lack. The elements that will meet this demand include such new concepts and technologies as the digital warehouse, object databases and distributed objects. It will be the database technologies developed in Era I and virtually ignored in desktop computing which will again dominate. If the network is the computer, then the database is the CPU.

The above paragraph also contains the key technical ingredients for the building of an on-line learning institute. Once we move information to the digital domain we open up totally new ways of interacting with that information and knowledge[1] . It is this new interaction which is the essence of the virtual institute. The fact that technology can now deliver information on-demand means that we can access the higher order functions of teaching and learning on-demand. We can utilise the teacher's time to facilitate learning and not for the low level task of delivering information.

The new technology though has caught us unprepared. There are as yet only hastily erected paths into and through this digital domain. The very concept of instantaneous, global, electronic publishing and messaging renders less effective by comparison many current methods for organising and navigating information systems. The structure of knowledge has become a burning issue.

4.4 The Human Computer Interface

Before one can hope to navigate knowledge systems one has to learn how to cope with the reduction from the multi-dimensional, multi-media, unlimited bandwidth system of the physical world to the limitations of the two dimensional, often limited media and narrow bandwidth of the digital world. These limitations are found throughout any system but nowhere are they more prevalent and defeating than in the interface to the system, the computer.

The computer interface has evolved from a character-based to a graphical-user interface (GUI) but is still the antithesis of intuitive. Virtually all components of computer interaction must be learned. The major interaction a human has with a computer is to either give information (instruction) or receive information. While the reception of information currently uses sound and vision to good advantage the giving of instruction to the device is totally defined by the design purpose or function and capability of the device. Early computers required hard-wiring of instructions to the Central Processing Unit (CPU) or even used punched-cards and hexadecimal keypads as the sole input of both data and instruction. The current QWERTY keyboard is only a minimal advancement on these systems.

We currently interact with computers at several levels for different reasons:

1. The Physical interaction is where the industrial design defines such things as switching on/off, adjusting the monitor, inserting disks etc.;

2. The Operating System level defines the interfaces and tools made available to manipulate the operating system or the computing environment, and its associated Input/Output components. This level also provides the means to manipulate data and applications at the macro level;

3. The Application level defines the manipulation of the data at the micro level where the user manipulates the text, numbers, sound, image or video directly;

4. The Network Systems level is where the user (or the user's agent) interfaces with the information or communication systems to either transport data or manipulate remote applications, operations or physical devices.

Era II and III computing reflect the interactions of levels 3 and 4 respectively. At some point the user does not want to be concerned with the functions of levels 1-3 but solely wants to get on with the higher order systems interaction of level 4. The complexities, and associated costs (time and money), of levels 1-3 are often quoted as one of the major reasons for not buying or learning about computers. As the functions of levels 1-3 get encapsulated in more intuitive, less expensive, easily transported, multi-modal and robust devices the participation rate of users at the systems level will accelerate. Governments, industry and consumers have realised there comes a point when "a deaf (and dumb) computer is not acceptable" (Negroponte, 1996:198). The late twentieth century rush to build better and more reliable communications infrastructure throughout the world, reflects the realisation that the model which puts the power at the desktop is flawed.

Many will choose to work in the areas of development and manipulation of content and use the computer as a low order construction tool. But for those other users who wish to use the computer to either communicate, analyse or synthesise information it is imperative for the interaction levels 1-3 to become seamless and transparent. All of these interaction levels combine to define the user experience with the device and also define the less tangible effects such as the user's satisfaction and the efficiency of the system. If the device cannot either extend the range of our senses and communications nor add value to our creative or industrial functions then that device is limiting.

4.5 Through the Window - Knowledge Navigation

Continuing the analogy of the computing device as a window into an information system brings us to the concept of ordering the `world outside' so as to understand, find and utilise information. It will be of no use to develop a device that isn't limiting if we then haven't developed processes and navigation systems that aren't themselves limiting. Firstly though, to allow the higher order functions of analysis and synthesis of information requires a universally acceptable and understandable taxonomy of all known knowledge areas.

There are a myriad of systems and taxonomies used for ordering and structuring information about our world and all its contents, whether concrete or abstract, static or dynamic. One area of study of knowledge representation is known as ontology, a term borrowed from philosophy. Gruber defines:

"the term ontology to mean a specification of a conceptualization. That is an ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can exist ....." (Gruber, 1993: 199-220).

The advent of global communications has been a catalyst to the defining and ordering of these taxonomies. Ontologies are often equated with, but need not be limited by, taxonomic hierarchies of classes and are designed for the purpose of knowledge sharing and reuse (Gruber,1993).

To make sense though, of any piece of information, no matter how small, we must attempt to place it into a context, since to leave it floating unrelated, renders it back to its component form which is nothing more than data. If information is data in context, then knowledge is information in context. Knowledge and learning are the result of the strategic management of cognitive, physical and social resources and are "strongly influenced by the extent to which internal and external resources fit together (Snow,1992)" (Kozma, 1994:8). It is this `fit' that is of concern in the design of any on-line learning institution. When the context is correct and the information fits, then the knowledge can be formed.

4.5.1 The Structure of Knowledge

Romiszowski (1983) suggests that `knowledge' generally implies two categories of capability, remembering and understanding which are related to the skilled behaviours of recalling and explaining. He then suggests four sub-categories into which we can classify knowledge:

1. Remembering

1.1 Facts

1.2. Procedures

2. Understanding

2.1 Concepts

2.2 Principles

In order to develop a `knowledge pool' full of facts and concepts for the learner to be immersed in and construct knowledge it is needed to order these facts and concepts as much as possible for navigational reasons without overly prescribing the relationships. In fact it must be "user-defined, and its design must be iterative and flexible"(Sherry, 1996). If only because our world needs an understandable view (from our perspective) of the knowledge base even if that view is incorrect or incomplete. Without this view or structure of the data we would have no way of naming or addressing a piece of information. Just the ordering of the view or taxonomy is itself one form of knowledge.

Clancy opens a discussion on cognitive psychology by stating that "Knowledge is not accumulated as one might add pennies to a pile ..... New pieces must be related to previous pieces to form a pattern" (Clancy, 1987:166). It is the identification, description, organisation and indexing of both the pieces and the patterns which is of utmost importance so as to store these pieces in such a way that they can be easily accessed and used for problem solving. Clancy describes this process as "chunking" where "meaningful sets of facts and relationships are associated and then stored and retrieved as functional units" (Clancy, 1987:168). If one could define and design an ontology to describe these `chunks' and store them in a database, a learner could use an inference engine and other guides to extract and recombine chunks into their own meaningful patterns. This concept is central to a learner-centred societal-based educational institution.

4.5.2 Information Representation

It is considered that a world-class expert such as a "Nobel laureate in chemistry, has learned from 50,000 to 100,000 chunks of heuristic information about his or her specialty" (Newell & Simon,1972; Simon,1969 in Clancy, 1987:169). The actual definition of a chunk is vague and open to interpretation. But if this abstract piece of knowledge or pattern could be captured as a digital entity in a digital container such as a file or database record one could attempt to define at least some of its more salient attributes. The technology advances of the past decades are allowing the realisation of this concept.

The task of designing descriptive taxonomies and ontologies is occurring at many levels of the digital domain. Much work is centred around the immediate problem of naming, addressing and identifying `digital containers' or information resources. With the advent of the Internet and digital libraries it is necessary to describe the collections of texts, images and sounds proliferating in the digital domain. These efforts range from simple indexing of titles to formal standards such as the TEI Header and MARC cataloguing used by libraries which are considered time consuming to create and maintain (Weibel, 1995). Popular solutions which are more informative than an index yet less complete than a formal cataloguing record are based around the proposals of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. In the USA there is a government backed initiative to map the digital domain known as the US National Information Infrastructure. (Gruber,1993)

4.5.3 Information Navigation - Browsing and Searching

The Dublin core, as it is known, concentrates on describing Document-Like Objects (DLO) such as files, images or sounds. This Metadata, or information about information, is added by the author and stored with the document and describes such elements as subject, title, date, author, type, language etc. This Metadata aids in the browsing and searching styles of Internet navigation. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and the indexing system of current search engines on the Internet works well for finding DLOs, or identifying the container. The nature of the content and its physical or implied virtual relationships are vague though and the DLO still must be viewed to confirm its relevance or appropriateness. Similarly, information inferred by hierarchical and logical relationships between containers tells one little about the abstract nature of that relationship. This must be spelt out in the actual content of the container. These pieces of context specific knowledge about relationships fall into the above definition of a chunk.(Weibel, 1995; Burnard et al, 1996)

At another level the chunk can both contain and be contained within a digital object. That is the nature of knowledge. It is made up of big and small pieces and patterns. A knowledge base of chunks should exist independently of the container type or hierarchy. Chunks could be delivered and stored at the macro level in typical containers (files, images, sounds etc.) but to move beyond browsing and searching should be accessed via their ontological interface as well as their physical and logical addressing schemes.

4.5.4 Information Investigation - Inquiring

The term ontological interface is derived from the definition of knowledge based ontology as being a commitment to a common ontology which defines "the vocabulary with which queries and assertions are exchanged among agents"(Gruber, 1993). That is an interface which is independent of any external physical and logical addressing schemes or other labelling schemata which may exist for the digital container but allows the querying of the data's abstract attributes. The ontology exists for the use of an agent or community of agents to query and assert information about the objects, concepts and the relationships that hold among them for some area of interest. It is via the use of agents that we move beyond the structured database to the knowledge base though initially these may be modelled using object database techniques. At this level the user investigates the knowledge base via the knowledge domain and as agents carry out much of the work the navigation system (hierarchical or logical) is rendered transparent and irrelevant to the user.

The Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML) is a language and protocol for exchanging information and knowledge. It is part of the Knowledge Sharing Effort which is aimed at developing techniques and methodology for building large-scale knowledge bases and is designed to support interactions among intelligent software agents. It is these agents which will collect information such as simple concrete facts, definitions, abstractions, inference rules, constraints and meta-knowledge (Finin et al, 1996) . They may then use languages such as the Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) to collate such information for presentation and offer further suggestions(Finin et al, 1996). It is the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) where intelligent information systems are being built using the above techniques. Their usage in commercial applications is starting to appear though are still relatively expensive compared to their structured database cousins. Little knowledge of their design and usage exists outside the laboratories of government, university and industry innovators.

4.6 Computers In Education

Another way of looking at the evolution of human-computer interactions is to use the three modes of computer usage in education suggested by Taylor where the computer's role is described as either a "tutor, tool or tutee" (Taylor,1980 in Logan,1996:249).

The first area where the computer is used as a tutor captured the interest of early educators who developed Computer Based training (CBT) systems to instruct students. Much work in this area is still carried out under the titles such as Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) and many of the rule-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. A limitation of these systems has been their emphasis on drill exercises and the reliance on rules for navigation which allowed the user very little contact with the knowledge body itself. A programmed decision making or inference engine usually comes between the two. Still, a well designed expert tutor system in a narrow (or known) knowledge domain can be a very useful teaching tool. A recently developed CD-ROM title "Oxidative Phosphorylation - A Simulated Experiment" helped save Australian National University having to kill 60 rats before the start of one regular laboratory session. The CD-ROM in this case captured static, known information - the physiology of a rat. (Tiffin & Rajasingham, 1995; Arundel, 1997)

Increasingly though there has been a realisation that all possible navigation types should be at the disposal of the learner in an educational or VET context, with the aim of providing "meaningful learning in authentic settings" (Sherry & Wilson, 1996:21). This is using the computer as a tool which the user defines how when and where to use. The tutor role may still be employed but now the user should have the choice to navigate around or through the CBT and to add other relevant resources. Further use of the tool mode allows the users to create their own resources via software applications. This is very much the current usage of computers in the business, private and higher education sectors in Australia where most users have access to both desktop and network technologies for developing, browsing and searching resources. The school sector is now also starting to provide these services which would combine with traditional library systems to provide a platform for resource-based-learning.

The third of Taylor's usages, the tutee role, has had little currency except for the teaching of computer language programming and its associated logic. Also this is where the AI and CBT of the tutor role are written and has been used to help teach higher order skills such as the construction of a knowledge domain. With modern tools the " author need only provide a knowledge network and a set of inference rules without specifying the exact instructional sequence" (Begg & Hogg,1987:323) so little programming knowledge is required. (Logan,1996)

A further as yet untapped usage of the tutee role though, is to teach the computer and its software agents to carry out tasks users currently do themselves in the tool mode. Using the computer and network in this way would allow freedom from some of the chores of learning and mastering of computing tools. The user can then concentrate on the analysis and synthesis of information via the use of access devices tapping into high speed knowledge networks. Also, unshackling the user from the tool will allow context rich access devices such as fridge doors that know about food and nutrition or ovens that know about gastronomy. Similarly if these devices are also capable of a `learning' mode they could create unique scenarios that are user dependent. This usage is not artificial intelligence. This is using existing knowledge, in context, in a more intelligent manner.

4.6.1 Visualising the Knowledge Domain

At the centre of any on-line learning institute will be the navigation systems; physical, logical and ontological. Without easy access to resources and information about resources the whole on-line institute suffers. In addition the ability to make unique relationships with the knowledge body is imperative. This will require that the learner has several views of the knowledge body available at any time. These views may represent both the physical placement of resources as well as their virtual placement including relationships and could be done via text, graphics or both. von Wodtke (von Wodtke,1993:24) calls this a "map of media space" which is a "visual representation of your information environment".

In a digital environment such as when an on-line user is accessing resources the representation of the resources may need to be switched at will between the physical, logical and ontological views. The physical view is what we are used to with our current directory and index systems used for the storage and retrieval of DLOs. Interfaces can be attached to this physical directory to present the DLOs in a manner which mirrors a pre-programmed logical view of the documents based on knowledge of their contents. A current logical interface which allows the user to `surf' through a galaxy of related subjects and documents has been developed by R. V. Guha of Apple Computer Inc.. Titled `Hot Sauce' and using the Meta-Content Format (MCF) which deals with two types of objects, topics and content objects, the objects can have not only a logical relation to each other but also a geometrical relationship which reflects this. This relationship places the objects not only above, within and beside but also adjacent, behind, near and far. This is very much a map of media space. (Guha,1996)

Ontological interfaces are as yet rudimentary and proprietary. Database systems and their languages (eg. SQL,OQL) combined with an over arching `intelligent interface' will have to suffice for the time being to aid in the building of an on-line institute. Work on Distributed Objects by the CORBA Group will sort out many of the software engineering problems to allow the exchange of data between knowledge nodes (Orfali et al,1996). It is though, difficult or impossible to capture all kinds of information and knowledge in most of these general languages. More specific knowledge sharing languages such as KIF will in the short term help to form a conceptual view of information and the `Ontolingua' ontological environment developed at Stanford University can use such languages to create maps of knowledge domains.(Finin et al, 1996; Gruber,1993)

Conclusion

So there is progress on the capture, storage, distribution and navigation of knowledge domains yet still no clear or agreed way of going about the task. There is though, even without completed international standards, enough elements of the design thought out for the more adventurous to contemplate the building of `intelligent' systems which would allow us to go beyond desktop centric computer systems to global roaming information systems.

Current computing technology can be used to store and deliver, though they need to be combined with much greater vision than previously applied to deliver Interactive Learning Systems.

***

[1] Knowledge can only exist in the mind of an individual. The use of the term here is in the simplistic manner of `value-added information'. That is information with other information attached which provides clues to its usage, relationships and constraints etc.

Table of Contents | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Chapter 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Conclusions | References
© 1997 Paul McKey