The Future Direction of Educational Technology

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Abstract
For all the apparent interest in and develop‐ ment of educational technology during the past 50 years, very little positive progress has been made, that is to say so far as providing a significant augmentation or replacement for traditional modes of instruction is concerned. Attempts so far to provide realistic adaptive mechanized teaching have been almost totally limited to main‐frame computer systems with results self‐evidently lacking in credence or potential. However, today we have within our grasp the means to achieve a realistic and potent technology of education, which can at last unfetter learning from its present pedagogic institutionalized straitjacket. The advent of the friendly’ microcomputer, coupled with an exponential boom in information accessibility, will provide a fertile scenario for lifelong education for the population at large. These benefits are not without concomitant dangers and in particular educational technologists will need to address themselves to two formidable problems: (1) the implications of a severe reduction in choice of available learning schemes, both as regards courseware and computer software, and (2) the greatly enhanced capability of mechanized systems for accumulation, retrieval and analysis of individual student variables, with a corresponding serious threat to individual privacy rights.

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