Education on the Electronic Frontier: Teleapprentices in Globally Distributed Educational Contexts. Interactive Technology Laboratory Report #14.

The instructional media created by microcomputers interconnected by modems to form long-distance networks present some powerful new opportunities for education. While other uses of computers in education have been built on conventional instructional models of classroom interaction, instructional electronic networks facilitate a wider use of apprenticeship education, in which students learn skills and acquire knowledge in contexts similar to those in which they will be used. To investigate these possibilities, an instructional electronic network (the Intercultural Learning Network) interconnecting students and teachers in the United States, Mexico, Japan, and Israel has been developed. For one project conducted in this network, students tackled a problem in their own community, the problem of the shortage of water. By addressing a problem shared across the different locations, students learned to transfer solutions used elsewhere to their own problems. They also acquired science concepts in an instructional setting that provided dynamic support for the acquisition of problem solving skills. This study raises a challenge to education: that the dominant form of instruction could become "teleapprenticeships." In this form of instruction, students would participate in globally distributed electronic problem solving networks, jointly tackling problems with other students, with teachers, and with adults outside the school. (9 references) (Author/GL)