"...The Barney generation kids are the first generation who are going to grow up thinking that houses come with t.v. sets, bathtubs, radios and computers...For Perry Como generation, even the Beatles Generation, when the computer goes down you take it personally, you think you did something wrong. But when the computer goes down, my 10-year old daughter she doesn't take it personally, she just reboots the computer. So that's a fundamental difference in their attitute. And what they are going to expect in schools and what they think about with respect with technology is very different than what the Perry Como generation, even the Madonna generation. Even that younger generation still doesn't really feel comfortable with the technology..."

For 50 years reformers have been predicting that technology would revolutionize the schools and they've been wrong. Why do you think things will be different this time around?

"There's a wonderful quote by Edison that says that the motion picture will replace textbooks in the very near future. That was in 1922. He was wrong then and by and large everyone who has said that has been wrong. We still take a piece of stone and put it against another piece of stone. It's a little dusty, but it's a fine technology. So the question is why should anyone believe the techies that this time it's going to be different?

There are two issues there. One issue is that by and large the availablity of the technology is changing. The consumer level, the ready availablity is just about there. It's almost at the price of a bicycle, it's almost at the point of a VCR. When it hits the consumer price point, then the availability takes over. But there's a deeper issue. If you look at all the other technologies, camera, radio, even the early use of the computer, they were one way technologies. They were technologies that presented information. They were technologies that told stories. Teachers don't need technology to tell stories. Teacher's like to tell stories. Teachers are good at telling stories. They don't need technology to replace them. What you see now is that the technology is interactive, it's two way. It supports kids in doing activities. It doesn't necessarily support them in telling them stories."

Tell us a little bit about your educational philosophy.

How are your ideas relevant from a kid's point of view? (Barry Fishman)

"One thing to keep in mind is that kid's have learned how to learn. The odd answers are in the end of the book. I'm supposed to express myself in this format to satisfy the requirements of the assignment. When you're left to your own devices, you really need to take a whole different approach. What we've been seeing is that kids really can take ownership of these questions. They start to follow small ideas that are very simple in the beginning and develop into very complex sets of understandings..."

How will technology affect the traditional role of the teacher?

"If you look at classrooms and look at the traditional education philosophy, especially at the middle school and high school level, it's typically direct instruction. Where a teacher stands up and tells kids stuff and they dutifully write it down or ignore it.

What the Dewey philosophy says is that kids have to engage in that activity. So instead of a teacher delivering a lecture in a didactic manner, what you have is 30 kids doing some sort of activity. Perhaps working in partnerships or teams, 2 or 3 or 4 in a team, and exploring a question. That's a different kind of classroom. If you go into the classroom and look, first you're going to hear a lot of noise because you're going to hear all these kids talking. There's a caucophony. And you're not going to be able to find the teacher, because the teacher is going to be moving around talking the kids. That's in contrast to a very quiet dutiful classroom, in which the kids are all facing forward, staring at the blackboard, listening to the teacher.

So that fundamental difference between the two classrooms characterizes the fundamental difference in the pedigogy. Notice, by the way, that what a workplace is, what parent's experience is, is much more like this latter environment, in which people are moving around, they're talking to each other, they are working with each other and there are experts helping each other out. So in a real sense, the pedagogy we're talking about relates directly to the workplace. Now how do you support 30 kids engaged in their different projects? The only possible way is through technology because one teacher can't keep all the stuff in their heads and can't manage for 30 kids..."

What is the role of the technology in learning?

"Computing technology allows us to deal with age old problems in new ways..."

You've had experiences working with schools in both Ann Arbor and Detroit. What are some of the differences?

When specific schools come to you for help, what benefits do they seek? (Barry Fishman)

What are the biggest factors in people's comfort levels with technology?

What kinds of materials for teachers are available on your Web site?

How do the educational opportunities available over the Internet compared to those available from shirk-wrapped software?

What will the typical classroom look like ten years from now?

Barry Fishman: "...By and large schooling is going to look like schooling as we understand it today for some time to come. But there are going to be small shifts and transitions and they're going to happen in different kinds of places. There are going to be some very forward thinking principals who are able to create some areas for experimentation and flexibilty. We're starting to see that where some people are moving away from 50-minute periods and twoards what's called the block schedule, which gives kids 90 minutes and time to get engaged in something and actually do some work. We're starting to see schools move away from the computer room and towards the laptop. Laptops give more flexible ways to set things up. What I hope we see is a migration towards is the notion of the school as another kind of workplace, where students as workers have the job of learning and we define what they're goals are."

Elliot Soloway: "There's a wonderful book by an educator and reformer, Deborah Meier, from New York, she worked in the schools in Harlem. The title is The Power of Their Ideas. What the book is about is respecting kids, respecting their ideas and respecting their conversations. Barry outlined a vision of where kids are interacting and doing stuff. And underlying that kind of vision is a vision of what we think kids are about and what we think people are about. That phrase, "the power of their ideas", really sticks in my mind as the goal. If we really take seriously that what kids are about, what learning is about, what the activity of schooling is about, is getting kids to talk to each other, geting them to talk to adults, getting them to interact, getting them to work and think hard, then the school will look differently. It will look like what Barry is saying, much like what we do at our workplaces, when we spend the majority of our day engaging in activities that essentially further us and the people around us. So school's have to get reorganized in terms of what are kids about and what is school about and it really is the "power of their ideas."

Where is the technology now in terms of providing resources for the classroom?

"What we're seeing is these pockets - forwardly thinking superintendents and principals who can help with the schools. What's interesting is that those pockets of change aren't evolutionary. It is a fundamental shift..."

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