Emerging Technologies: Impacts on Distance Learning

In the next decade, our society may change from its present extensive use of technology as a mediator of human experience to a reliance on technology-permeated experience as a primary form of personal consciousness. In response, our paradigm for distance learning must evolve so that we can replicate the workplaces and communities of the future in schools today. This will aid students in filtering and interpreting the complex, pervasive informational environment that sophisticated media are creating in society. This article presents a scenario crafted to suggest the capabilities of advanced technology for making distance-learning environments more effective. Policies should be developed so that the benefits of these innovations for distance learning are realized as rapidly as possible, but we must ensure that these powerful new media do not shape the instructional message in unwanted ways.