Select educators, researchers and policy
makers are addressing a vital issue: the impact of digital technology on learning -
will it merely produce incremental improvement or could it lead to fundamental
Digital technology has impacted different sectors of
life in different ways and to different depths. Some, such as communications
and many branches of medicine, have been transformed beyond all recognition.
A time traveller from even half a century back would not have the faintest
understanding of the questions being discussed at a research conference
in these areas.
Other sectors have been impacted more superficially.
Among these is Education. Nobody in Education would say that ICT does
not have some role. But prevailing policies virtually everywhere appear
to be based on the assumption that at least in the foreseeable future,
the presence of the technology will not fundamentally change the way schools
work. Worse, there is no focused forum for asking why.
We are creating such a forum, beginning with the discussions at Media Lab Europe during the spring of 2004.
Professor Emeritus Seymour
Papert introduced the themes of Epistemology, Learning, School, Society,
Technology, and Change, which the delegates addressed. We hope the proceedings
and other records here will become a platform for continuing Europe-wide discussion on
this issue and ultimately for catalyzing change.