Information society : agenda for action in the UK : evidence received after 31 March 1996 / Select Committee on Science and Technology.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
- Date:
- 1996
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: Information society : agenda for action in the UK : evidence received after 31 March 1996 / Select Committee on Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![23 April 1996] [Continued Lord Gregson contd.] core subject teaching which is letting us down badly by comparison with other countries in the world? (Ms Drabble) I think some of the evidence, my Lord Chairman, is starting to point in the direction of children gaining confidence, children who might otherwise not score well in standard tests gaining confidence from using these technologies, from using word processing, from accessing the Internet, using E-mail. I know there is some evidence from America that this can happen. 495. Interactive video based on CD Rom is surely a new technology as far as children are concerned, there is not much difference except that it is all contained within the classroom and it is cheaper as well by the way. (Mr Phillis) I think, my Lord Chairman, there is an evolutionary process going on. I do agree with you that on the current state of technologies that are available, interactive CD Rom and structured teaching in the way you have described it is extraordinarily powerful and it is, I think, more likely to emerge as a readily available system than the potential benefits that the Internet can offer in the immediate short-term future. I was, during an earlier part of this year, in the United States and I visited an educational centre that a company called TCI— Telecommunications Incorporated—has established in Denver and they were developing, I think, some hugely exciting Internet type services where taking simply the news agenda of the day pupils and students were able to explore the background in scientific terms or background terms, to access in far greater detail, for example, the Chernobyl crisis or events in the Middle East or whatever, and provide the background information which informed the students in terms of the events portrayed in the news. I think there are areas like that which illustrate the potential. Lord Gregson] I am sure your technical department warned you about the enormous problems of providing the switching for this situation on a universal scale, it is just simply impossible, so you have got a limited technology before you start. Lord Flowers 496. It is all very well making reports about Chernobyl] and things like that available to school children but they are not there to learn about that. It is a good thing that they are interested and that will help their interest, of course, but this is what Lord Gregson was talking about, the core subjects. They should be learning, let us say, chemistry, not Chernobyl. There is a tendency, I think, for people who use the Internet to get, Lord Gregson called it the froth, the extracurricular activities. The whole business is so attractive that the tendency is that you will study the froth to the exclusion of the core and that could be educationally very bad. (Mr Phillis) 1 am not for one moment suggesting, my Lord Chairman, that there is any substitute for proper rigour in the teaching of core educational subjects and disciplines in schools and teaching establishments. I was not intending to imply that. The example I was referring to was how, for example, a news story on something like Chernobyl could allow a class and students to explore some of the scientific questions underlying that and the environmental questions underlying that where an event is used to take a group of interested individuals, who might not necessarily be school children but at different levels of the educational system, to understand the background to such issues. I am not suggesting, and I am sure Jane is not suggesting either personally or on behalf of the BBC, that the Internet will ever replace the importance of rigorous teaching in our education establishments, for one moment. Lord Gregson 497. Surely the point is this technology can be used for core teaching, it is a marvellous method of core teaching, should we not be concentrating on that? (Ms Drabble) The most important point I would make is that the BBC is there to help teachers and to resource teachers and to use its talent and its assets in the best way it possibly can to resource the classrooms. This is what we do at the moment with the means of television and video and audio and this is where we will increasingly be using other media. Of . course, these issues about core educational standards are critical and we will play an appropriate role in the provision of that. Baroness Hogg 498. As you were saying a moment ago, penetration of televisions is probably far greater than the penetration of PCs. We have seen spectacular growth in Internet type services, partly at least because television at the moment is subject to the tyranny of the spectrum and the number of services you can deliver is limited. As you move into the digital age do you see the focus of growth shifting from Internet type services received on computer type services to television, interactive digital services received by television? (Mr Phillis) 1 think from the BBC’s perspective an essential means of delivery will be programme services across the airways in the case of radio or via the television screen. That is the focus of everything that we do. I think that it is unclear as to the extent to which the PC and the television monitor will merge into the same vehicle. There is a view that suggests that the PC, certainly with further technical development, will be capable of receiving reasonable, and perhaps high quality, visual moving pictures actually on the screen although there is quite a lot of refinement and development before that takes place. I suspect that both systems will work in parallel. 499. But the installed base of televisions isso much | larger than the installed base of computers? (Mr Phillis) Indeed. I think that the television installed base and the move to the digital possibilities is very much going to depend on the impetus that the television set manufacturers have, helped and encouraged one hopes by Government policies, to convert from analogue receivers to digital receivers over time. It will take quite a long time simply because of the replacement rate of television sets in the home. I think we will see, with suitable](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218631_0045.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
