As he goes to the first session he passes a visitor browsing the school Internet kiosk in the entrance hall. Video highlights of last week’s school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are running. ‘I have had a most rare vision, I have had a dream – past the wit of man to say what dream it was’, intones Bottom, played by a final year who hopes to go on the professional stage. The Student Council area gives details of the bursaries awarded to students going on study exchange with their e-pals in various parts of the world. The Hall of Fame lists this week’s stars on the sports field.

Mrs Green, the science teacher, begins her day by logging on to the school's network. An alert message informs her that her form pupil, Paula Smith, is absent. She clicks to authorise an automatic text message to Paula’s mother’s mobile phone to confirm her absence. Mrs Green starts with a lesson she prepared the previous week. She is able to access all the resources from home and was able to get the latest CCEA template, exemplar lesson plans and other materials on Learning NI, the online environment for Northern Ireland.

As part of her individual professional development entitlement, Mrs Green, with another member of staff, chose an on-line course last term. Their on-line tutor was a local science adviser, and they worked with specialist staff from W5 and the University. The digital learning materials they wrote now feature prominently on the school's intranet. Currently pupils are working through these in a three-week block. Some of the pupils work independently on the unit on physical forces and regularly discuss their experiences with other pupils studying this topic elsewhere in NI through the Science virtual learning community.

Based on information on each child from the LNI assessment and progress report module she arranged her class into three ability groups, each of which has its own learning pathway for this topic. Eddy is doing well at the minute. He opens his saved homework file and his results spreadsheet appears on all the other computer screens for the class to see and discuss. Mrs Green is pleased to be able to confirm his move to the top group. His learning pathway includes a review of two short videos, an interactive simulation on sequencing, some digital pictures, a simple test, and an investigational activity in the NASA Internet site.

Next is geography, a straightforward lesson on volcanoes, except that Mr Fields shows digitised news footage of a volcano that erupted the previous day in Hawaii, and spends ten minutes interviewing a TV journalist live at the scene. He provides the class with three websites to explore either at home or in the open resource centre after school. The pupils have to identify the gaps in the information provided, identify further sites and later on, collaborate to create a news presentation for the school’s recently installed video-wall.

Learning NI tracks the progress of all pupils as they work through their various tasks. Based on his observations of their computer-based work Mr Fields notes four children who are having problems. He modifies a standard e-mail to send to their parents and places, on each child's own personal work area, an additional activity to be accessed from home.

During lunch, the open-plan areas are full of pupils. One group discusses a forthcoming multimedia presentation, they are delighted that a key member of the group who has been ill is going to make her contribution from home by videoconference. Two of the group are nervous, they have completed a module and take their final assessments on-line today.  At the end of the day, Mrs Green and her teaching team log on to Learning NI to review their departmental planning. Teachers review the materials in one of the staff cyber-cafes where they can do research, check out their pupil evaluations, and prepare materials. She notices the text reply from Paula Smith’s mother and she sends the learning pathway for Paula Smith to her personal work area with a ‘get well soon’ message. A text message automatically goes to Paula Smith's parents email, letting them know about the work.

The teaching team are testing out some new materials. In one of the frequent revisions of the environmental science curriculum a new topic had been introduced. There was a shortage of material on this new area and many teachers need to be trained. A group of specialist teachers, advisers, scientists and learning resource managers worked together to create online curriculum resources for the NI Virtual High School. The site went live along with chat rooms to allow the creators and users to test and modify the site based on experience in the classroom. This resource will soon be made available to any teacher in the country, for which the school gets free “seats” on any Virtual High School course programme.

This approach is also used by museums and galleries, to ensure that the sites they create are both educationally sound and relevant to the curriculum. Such research and peer development marks the maturity of the teacher online “community of practice” and is part of the move towards a dynamic professional model.

After school, Eddy has basketball practice. Eddy's basketball is monitored by axions - sensors that monitor the pressure on the ball, and his trajectory and velocity across the hall before he makes a shot. During a break, his video glasses show him professionals making similar shots and suggests some practice drills to improve performance.

On the way out , Mrs Green calls up her daily planner on her personal palm organiser and reviews tomorrow's sessions. She makes a quick change, books some video conferencing time, and re-assigns two pupils. It is now five-fifteen, yet the school is still buzzing with activity. As many students and teachers finish for the day, still more arrive. Two community groups have booked space this evening: one group is hosting a parenting class; the other is beginning a new programme to help older citizens to get the most out of their virtual reality home entertainment systems.

In one of the teaching spaces, a group of senior English Literature pupils is discussing E.M. Forster.

“What a pity” one of the adult students remarks “that E.M. Forster couldn’t have seen how wrong he was about technology in his short story, The Machine Stops.”

“Tell us about the story,” the teacher prompts. “Well, in this story, people exist in dark, private worlds utterly dependent on technology, unable to bear human contact or open spaces. Vashti and Kuno are mother and son. They live on opposite sides of the world and they communicate in flickering images on a view screen. Kuno would like his mother to visit him in real time and space: she is reluctant. Eventually, Kuno decides that he will……, but I won’t spoil the story. You all should read it.”

“But isn’t it ironic, then,” says another girl, “that in Aspects of the Novel, Forster urges us to ‘only connect’. Wouldn’t it have been great for him to have lived to see that the ‘only connect’ part was right?
“Yes, and that technology helped to connect people not the other way round. “

Edited from contributions by Adeline Dinsmore (Principal, Ashfield Girls’ High School), Margaret Montgomery (NEELB ICT Adviser), Niel McLean, (Director of Learning, Becta) and Chris Yapp (HP).

More future scenarios can be found on www.elearningfutures.com

JANUARY 2004