Engagement and construction: Educational strategies for the post-TV era

THE POST-TV MEDIA of computers (hypermedia, graphic user interfaces, word processors, spreadsheets, databases, sound, music, animation, etc.) and communications (electronic mail, bulletin boards, groupware, fax, video, etc.) enables teachers, students, and parents to creatively develop education by engagement and construction. Students should be given the chance to engage with each other in team projects, preferably situated in the world outside the classroom, with the goal of constructing a product that is useful or interesting to someone other than the teacher. Challenges remain such as scaling up from small class projects to lecture sections with hundreds of students, covering the curriculum that is currently required by many school districts, and evaluating performance. However, there seems to be no turning back and, anyway, the children of the Nintendo and Video Age are eager to press fast forward.