thumbnail of 1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention; Educational Communications - A Look At The Future
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OK. Testing 1 2 3 4 Testing 1 2 3 4 Testing 1 2 3 4 3 3 cores. Good. Morning ladies and gentlemen. There are more seats up here know the panelists are all coming up front. So come on down towards the front. I don't know who's planning it was to put as the first small meeting like this this early Monday morning as a look in the future. These things usually held the last day of the conference but that's me. Start us off on the right foot. My whole purpose here this morning is to get this meeting started right on time and to turn it over to your
chairman Mr. Emanuel Stroman from who's director of public relations at Litton Industries. There's a little systems that is systems sold without further ado. We're all aware that just in that community we just had a breakdown a communications system like that. We all know that communications is playing a ever increasing role in education in the United States today and we're going to take a look at what some of the future trends and needs are in this area. We have a distinguished panel here of educators and representatives from industry. And I will introduce them and will use this
format will have the educational representatives tell about the requirements as they see them and will have the people from industry give their views and their answers as to what industry is doing about meeting these requirements. And then if we have time we'll open questions from the floor start up. Alamo Lang who is manager of product planning for visual communications product at General Electric. Am I right. JOHN CLAPHAM and product manager broadcast video products of the Ampex corporation. George Callahan sales project manager AT&T Jim Miles director of radio and TV at Purdue University and the Robert Cherokee university dean of academic planning at the University of California. And last but not least Richard Poole an assistant director Office of running resources educational systems division of light and industry supposed to start
off with Mr. Miles. Good morning or still a few seats up here. I will help you. I'm going to read a paper this morning simply because I wasn't real certain Up until the last minute that I could possibly make this meeting and I was going to have to impose upon my good associate John glade. And I thought well bad enough to ask him to do it let alone ask him to make the speech so I'd better sit down and do something and. In the interest of saving time and so on I think I will do just that. Education's needs for new communications technologies are bound up in what is fast becoming a cliche to the average public but which is nevertheless very real to anyone working in educational circles. The question education is
today facing a tremendous challenge brought on by the explosion of knowledge and the explosion of population. We all know about the population explosion but it may be helpful to again bring home to everyone how really tremendous it is to facts in the past decade the public school enrollment in the state of Indiana has grown by over 30 percent. To the institutions of higher learning in Indiana have nearly three times as many students as they had prior to World War Two three times. Contradictions by producers Academic Vice President Paul of China indicate that we can expect a doubling of college enrollment in Indiana each decade in the future each decade in the future which means a six to eight fold increase by the year 2000. Thirty five short years away on the information side various authorities have used various time spans in their predictions. But the one I like the best is that if we took all the knowledge in the world up to the year 1930 and doubled it we would
now be in the year 1960 another doubling will occur early in the 1970s. And the time needed for doubling will grow smaller with each such a doubling in the future. Pretty Then the poor professor who a few short decades ago found it fairly easy to read his field and at the same time instruct a reasonable number of students. Today the same professor finds that there is anywhere from three to ten times as much material published which he must review in order to read his field and at the same time three to ten times the number of students are demanding to take his courses with the situation growing more complicated. The only thing a reasonable professor can do is retire or he really will never live long enough to ever again be able to adequately read his field or personally handle his students by using conventional methods. Professors educators should be ready to accept some of these newer tools. They're only human of course and they're going to have to be
encouraged and nudged into this acceptance. Some few have already arrived at acceptance. Others are coming to this realization slowly. It will take a decade or more before there is general acceptance of these ideas but it will come. But then can we do what types of equipment are seemingly most needed. Welp at the top of the list helps all the information explosion. I must put the centers which are attempting to organize the world knowledge in Given limited fields. There is such a center at Purdue University known as the thermal physical properties Research Center. The director of the center told me a week or two ago that we now have all of the world's knowledge on the thermal physical properties of matter. A bold statement. But I believe you. Granted it's a limited field in research and if not more than several decades old
nevertheless it's taken eight years of diligent searching with a half million dollar annual budget to be able to even make a list of all this material. Now the process has started to collect all of this material and I mean now the printed page and this job is some 60 to 70 percent complete. Well I'm certain you can see what follows. Where do you store all of this material and the rapidly growing body of information which continues year after year. The PRC is going to micro fish and all of the material is rapidly being transferred over to this method of storage. On the citation side this has long been stored on computer tapes and books which represent printouts of the computer tapes have been published and sold. One hundred fifty dollars a copy. But the completion of the installation of our IBM Model 67 computer about 18 months we will be able to put these several tapes from TPR CD on in an on line situation for anyone who wishes to use the teletype to retrieve the information
contained therein. Once having found the information a teletype message to TPR see would cause the PRC to either make a microfiche copy and airmail it to the researcher or if technology permits allowing to put it on a slow scan television device and feed it to the user where it could be taken off in hard copy form by electrostatic photocopy processes we need and hope to have in the next few years. This system in actual operation it needs to be repeated many hundreds of times. You know their feelings. As far as the handling of students is concerned the professors need to learn to use the modern tools of communication that currently exist and to be aware of new ones as they are developing. Many professors have not yet learned to properly use the telephone. Thus we have an education job to convince them that they can use such things as the electro writer. So scan television facsimile and tell a typewriter. More important than that we have to convince them that they should use these things and that they
in fact need to use them. It is in this latter area which should perhaps not be characterized as an explosion but rather as a thickening of the already impenetrable educational jungle that educational communications people must spend the most time on. This can only be done on an individualized basis showing by precept and example the values to be gained by using storage and retrieval audio visual devices television and other devices and by participating actively in the simple exchange of information with counterparts at other institutions. It used to be said that it took a generation to change educational methodology. I firmly believe we've now trimmed this down to perhaps a decade. In 1962 we started some work with geology people at the 11 Midwestern universities which are joined together in what is known as the CIC. The committee on institutional cooperation of the Big Ten of the University of Chicago. I'm very hopeful that by 1972 we
will have major portions of the beginning science courses on television tape and that these will be used in a number of these 11 institutions in regular coursework. Other areas will come in time and the decade will be shortened to but a few years and maybe even shorter. Someday we will get to the place where a good idea is easily distributed and generally readily accepted. The millennium I firmly believe will certainly be within my lifetime. How then can the industry help us. Well I think the best way is to make simple communications tools work easier better and cheaper. Certainly we will want to know more about computers. We will want to use these inexact and exotic ways like computer assisted instruction. We will want to use complex television productions operated perhaps in conjunction with programmed instruction. But these things are a bit down the road.
Our first job is simple. Just make it easy for people to talk to each other and they can support affirmatively those educational communications people who are working directly with the faculties to get them to start talking. This is the only place to start. The rest will follow. Thank you. Our next speaker will be doing charity. Thank you Mr. Chairman. It is my pleasure to be with you not being one of your member I'm particularly honored to be invited to address this group. I was given rather too much carte blanche in what I what I could say.
So I have decided to be rather broadly oriented and concern myself with the the fact that in order to discuss the role of communications communication systems particularly in the future of higher education of course it's necessary to assess the changing activities within the colleges and the universities which must be filled by communication systems from the University of California we are particularly acutely aware of these problems having at the present time nine campuses each campus each of these being a general campus with the exception of San Francisco which is only for Medical Sciences. But each of our general campuses is planned for a student population of around 25000 students. There will be at least four more by the year 2000 we're currently in the process of trying to make our our plans for growth of the University of California to the U.S. to the year 2000 by which time we will need at least four more campuses actually will need them by the year
1985. So this is a very acute problem which we face in California. We face other acute problems in the University of California. But I shan't make it in the present time. One of the only advantages I have discovered in being the only administrator in the state was ministration at least with a beard is that I can walk across the Berkeley campus and be accepted by Tom. Likewise. Well I'm not entirely appreciated this. I feel in some of the administrative circles for example. Recently I saw the plans for a new library which we're building out on one of our new campuses in Santa Cruz which is a very delightful place for those of you who may have a chance to come and visit us I highly recommend it. And there's libraries it's a kind of on a mountain and there's a there's a moat going around it which I suggested could be filled with water and subsequently stocked with microfiche. But.
I try. So what is the what can I say about the changing role the changing images the changing activities of universities which are going to acutely affect how we can make adequate use of communication systems and how in my opinion the communications engineers should should look toward list should look in order to help us. I'll make my brief comments under three categories educational activities research activities and public service activities which are carried on by institutions of higher education. First education. Now we have had. Beautifully illustrated for us the problem of the expanding demand for higher education based on the increase in population and grade based upon the explosion of knowledge. I shall make no further comments about that I could
not possibly enlarge on the only presentation already already given you. I would however point out that not only is there this enormous increase in demand resulting from the population explosion and the knowledge explosion there is also the enormous increase in demand because more people want to go to college. And this is also very critical we are again acutely aware of this in the California scene where already Earth it has been customary for a third of our high school graduates go on to college and it is rep it is assumed that by the year 2000 this will have risen to probably two thirds. Whether all these should go to college or not is another question. But that's not the point. The demand is there. In order to meet these demands as has been pointed out we must multiply the effectiveness of the teachers and we must multiply the effectiveness of the facilities which we have available. Because in order to finance this higher education
we are going to have to both increase the concept of how much it costs we have to change the concept by orders of magnitude. We cant worry if we are really going to do it if the if the public demand is to be met and the public really if the public really wants it met then they must recognise that their concept of how much it costs is going to have to change not in terms of dollars but in terms of in terms of full numbers of full of dollars that will have to be have to be spent. The present budget of the University of California alone just the University of California for example including its federal contracts is at the present time operating budget is Six hundred million dollars a year. Six hundred fifty million this year. That does not include the expansion program that is not into the buildings and so on for that in order to expand at the rate the university will have to expand if it is to fill the need of really to fill the demands of the of the people of the state of California we will have to have a bond issue of almost 200 million dollars every other year.
This is out of the question. How are we going to do these things. Well we must make maximum use of our of our instructors and our facilities. We must have all kinds of intercommunication networks by which we can multiply the effectiveness of our of our instructors. We must have all kinds of inner communicating neck networks whereby we can use our facilities throughout our state and throughout the nation for example just take one. Let me give you one example a library. We have assumed that it would be necessary to build two major libraries one in Northern California and one in Southern California one for our Northern campuses one for our Southern campuses each of these being libraries of Ultimately five to 10 million volumes credible sized libraries. Yet each of our campuses rightfully feels that they should have their own library of 5 to 10 million volumes. How can they have immediacy of access if they don't have it right on their campus and there's there is a reality to their to their concerns. We tried such failing techniques as
buses by which we could move books from from campus to campus. But it didn't work fast enough so we decided all right let's move the people so we could put seats on the buses and then move the people back and forth but this doesn't work either. This is these are not the answers the only answers are of course all but they do have some kind of information storage and retrieval system which is available immediately online from wherever the faculty member happens to be. A second area of educational change which is going on in our universities is the dependence of the top of a technological society such as we have on the trained technician and professional. Let's face it the society is run now by trained technicians and professionals and it will be more so each passing year and the demand for trained technicians and professionals continues to mount excessively enormously I should say. Accompanying this is obsolescence technological obsolescence which happens now in
some fields some engineering fields within five years within five years after that after the cessation of a formal education period the individual is no longer properly educated to undertake the technological demands for his particular profession happens to impose. So we must have some kind of continuing education we must lead. Change the concept of when education stops so that it is recognized that one must continue as has always been the case in some of the professions such as medicine. We must recognise all professionals must recognise that the process of continuing education is part and parcel essential to their continued affective MS as technically trained members of society. And this is going to change a great deal of our requirements in terms of how do we disseminate knowledge and education throughout throughout society. Let me jump now to the question of research. Several things are changing the picture of research and introducing new needs for various kinds
of information transmission. First of all the nature of research projects is changing to the extent that they require more and more intercoastal operations. The pre-war days when most research done in universities was done on a solitary individual basis of a scientist in his laboratory working diligently with the crude equipment. This is all gone as you well know in our research projects are characterized by interdisciplinary questions. They are characterized by expensive facilities which have which can only be constructed in one area and then use must be made of these by wide spread groups and so on. This means that we must have rapid dissemination of information throughout our Throughout this network of research activity. We must have rapid dissemination of new knowledge for the economic health of our technological society in order to keep our society going in order to keep our economy competitive. We must continually introduce the latest developments of technology. This means we must have communications systems by which we can
do this. How do we manage to get the immediacy of research into the technological into the of the industry the technological industry. Not only is this important for the for the economic welfare of our technological industry but it is so important for the solution to national problems social problems health problems for example. Look at the recent which I mention and in a minute the recent legislation on heart disease cancer and stroke which requires this kind of immediate. One of the one of the thrusts of that legislation is to bring into immediate use of research and knowledge gained in the University Medical School. Finally a few comments on the public service aspects of the universities Now these this is a never neverland and this is the area where the greatest concern now exists in the university mind and rightfully so. There has been as you are all well aware now an underground development within the universities which has been primarily response the result of
the fact that universities are the major reservoir of expertise available to the government and to industry. When this was discovered and as as we became more and more technological and as the property as the as the function of governing became more and more technological and more and more complex and involved and demanded more and more studied the comprehensiveness the universities were drawing on the expertise of the universities became drawn for consultation and advice. At first the government and still to a large extent the government and industry do this on a one to one basis they go and they look for the person who is the expert and say Will you come and consult on such and such a problem. That's fine and that meant that this underground movement of the faculty toward Washington has reached has reached the proportions where one wonders where one's faculty is most of the time and then one knows where they are there in Washington or out some other area consulting. One should not underestimate this. This is this this is an
enormous wave of activity which the universities are carrying on. The next step in this is the obvious one in which the government and industry recognize that the university itself as an institution is better able to recognize and partition its expertise. So instead of hunting for the individual and plucking them out go to the institution or sub some sub unit of the institution such as a center or an institute and ask that they instead ask the question of the unit that this works with this is a more efficient use and so this is beginning to happen more and more. And now the government of industry will come to the universities and ask them either as universities or as the appropriate subhumans to solve problems. Fine but this is a new role for universities to play they've never they've never conventionally done this before. Before very recently the next step is actually beginning to happen. And this is the one that intrigues me most. The university is beginning to become an executor of social welfare. To the extent that it is
being built into legislation look again at the heart disease cancer and stroke here in the construction of that legislation. The University Medical School University and its medical school were set up at the top and it was just assume now these will be the regulators the controllers actually the designers and constructors of this network of health of health. Facilities which will be stationed around the country of the Technical Services Act recently passed that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. For example indicates that each state shall then appoint some agency within it as the responsible agency for implementing this Technical Services Act and the for example California is doing what it but it would tend to do in other states would probably do the same thing it appoints its university as the agent for implementing the technical services. This means that the universities are for are are being thrust into this new role of executors of Public Welfare again something
universities have never done. The universities are changing markedly as you can see from this. And I'm wondering what's going to happen to them and when are the universities going to decide to sit up and see what's happening to them and decide whether they want it to happen to them or not and which direction they wish to go. And you can see the enormous significance this has for the for what role communication systems must play in universities in the future. Let me close by pointing out the kind of extension I see in this in this process. The university began as a cloistered monastic situation. Primarily designed to enable scholars to remove themselves from society get behind walls live a life of scholastic seclusion and do what scholars did illuminated manuscripts and things fun. This was the beginning of the universe these walls are crumbling and they have crumbled very markedly already. The university is becoming an imminent direct
day to day part of the process of society. In fact I propose for its becoming even more than that it is becoming the very focus of our society itself. The university is emerging as that that social structure on which the very the very activities of society will him. And this is the most remarkable thing that the universities must recognise this is happening and this is responsible for a lot of the unrest in universities at the present time among the faculty. They don't like this. They do not. They prefer Many a large percentage I would say of the faculty who have who who belong to the core of academics the core academic structure of universities are there because they do not want to be to be engaged with society because they do want to withdraw because they feel they can make their big major contributions by being remote from the social upheavals and they're not happy about this change. So I'm proposing universities are going to have to undergo a tremendous upheaval and revise themselves and perhaps my suggestion is that we build in the center of
the university. The groves of academe and buffer them and keep them remote as possible from society and put into these central groves of academe those people who can make their major contributions to society by being kept remote from society who are unhappy and dismayed by being in the imminence of social activity fine put them there and then have surrounding peripheral concentric rings of the university. Ultimately the professional schools on the outside not on the outside but near the rim the professional schools and then finally the intra digitizing parts of the university that extend out into into society. And I propose for you that we must look forward to what communications networks must provide for us as a university that is no longer. Not only is no longer bounded by walls but is no longer bounded by geography it doesn't stop any particular place you couldn't say here's where university stops in the rest of the of the society the community begins now that must dissolve. There must be no stopping point. The thing must just be the first just completely diffuse one into the other. So that for example
education goes on in factories education via closed circuit television goes on and in throughout industry. Emanating from the university or controlled by the university or I don't like the word control I don't really want to put it thrust into that role organized by the university and probably promoted by the university. You know not only must the universities thoughts lose their geographical boundaries this also U.S. route to the university this is a this is a most enormous concept because it says we can't even any any longer ask such questions as how many faculty members do you have. We can't answer that question now. We have some people that dollar income from the university some will get half their income from university and half from other sources and probably who can say how many faculty we have. It's no longer a meaningful question. Yet we're still trying to force ourselves into these old pigeonhole. And finally we must say that the university ceases to exist as a unit of time. We no longer must think of the university as a place where you geographically go into at a particular moment in life and then
geographically leave at another moment in life and begin to do something else to produce that must be a race to. You are continually relate to people. Society must be continually in relationship with the university. It must be continually receiving from its university and giving to its university it must. Life will have to become a balance between learning and doing because you can't do for a very long time before your learning ceases ceases to be adequate any longer due to the technological advance and consequently you must be. We must change this concept that we leave the university. We ought never to leave it we ought never to leave learning. And so consequently this is a whole new concept which we must introduce into the social structure. All I can ask of of industry and communications people in general is to try and help solve what I see as the major dilemma that universities have ever self or face. Thanks Erin. Thank you the interview. There are few more seats available in front here if anybody would like to come up
here. Well obviously there is a need for increased communications for increased facilities and services. How can industry help. What does industry require from the educational community to enable them to provide simpler more economical equipment that does a more complex job. What other services can industry provide for members of the panel who have been serving the educational community. Stock up in advance. Well since basically I'm involved in the storage of information the dissemination of information. I'll restrict my comments to that at the moment. We feel that there has to be a better means of storing the
information and making it readily accessible. We have heard from previously that. We've heard previously that the information is increasing at a rapid rate and that there must be better means of disseminating this. We are looking at a system in the future that will allow people to have perhaps a monitor the availability of dialing up a specific piece of information and reading this on a monitor. This is called a video file system. And this would allow the industry to. I'm sure this would allow the industry to help the educator in disseminating this information. You could then receive a hard file copy. You know this along with us we feel that we should be able to
assist the educator in the distribution of programming to make better use of the educator along with us. We hope to come up with cheaper and better video recorders. I think this is the contribution that we can make in the storage area. Next we'll hear from George Callahan of banking take. I guess is all of you. I'm amazed to hear the kind of dollars and cents quoted him Miles I'm sure you have tossed out here. You consider the fantastic expenditure at the University of California and then
I think about my own company and I think this I want to get this in perspective and it leads up to a very basic point in the way we are thinking about how we can assist education. Each year the Bell System as your valley well-aware least each year for the past five years is spent well over three billion dollars a year to keep up with and grow with the demands for communications. Three and a half billion dollars. I believe that the total Bell System plan now is valued somewhere around 30 billion dollars that I put out for them and. This causes us to direct our efforts primarily to find ways and means by which
we can use this particular facility this plant to the utmost efficiency. One more thing to get this in the perspective all of us have seen the introduction of picture phone in the last year and a half. A device which certainly harbors tremendous things to education someday. Just last week I heard one of our engineers put this baby in the perspective however he pointed out that with today's know how in picture phone type communications to achieve a development of one per cent of our subscribers with picture phone service would cost us many many times more in our total plant than we already have invested after building our plant for 80 years. 1 percent so there isn't a whole lot of
point in putting all our efforts in that area although it's something that has to be developed and that's why you will see every time the Bell System has an exhibit or presentation we try to keep finding and showing ways to use today's technology in Jim brings us out when he points out that the important thing is in our opinion that too many educators today don't even think of this fantastic tool. The telephone which is capable of connecting people to people or people to machines or machines to machines anywhere and almost to the point anywhere in the world but certainly anywhere in this country. On a basis that you can turn it off and turn on when you when you want it you can select out of 75 or 80 million locations specifically where you want to go for the
information you're after. And I know that many manufacturers are now devoting their efforts to the development of better input and output devices and some within certain areas the Bell System is doing this to a Course specifically in the teletype writer development because these are the kinds of things we think that will make the video file since Dan has already mentioned that and the other computer facilities whether General Electric or IBM or anybody else is available to everybody whether they are teachers in a classroom whether they are graduate students working out in the Cape Kennedy trying to keep up with this technological obsolescence or fight technological obsolescence or whether it's you or I in the office or as was touched upon in this morning's presentation it's this great mass of people who are going to be living in our country in the next
decades who range from 65 years and up who need to get this access right in their own living room. And so this is the direction of one major direction that we've been working and the other thing I would like to touch on briefly. We feel that the biggest problem of all of the Bell System is had in working with the education community has been not really understanding the educators and their objectives. And so in the last two years our major efforts in the sales area of the Gulf operating companies has been to select train and give experience to education market specialists people who would become familiar with the educators goals and objectives whether they're talking about school systems parochial or public where they're talking about
college postgraduate level but people who would be able to go in and sit down and work with educators and be able to translate their objectives and demands into meaningful communications systems that can be sold to date and feedback to AT&T and the Bell Laboratories directional guidance as to what needs to be developed to meet these educational objectives. Thank you. Next speaker will be Alan Lange of General Electric. Q What I can tell you is easy feels rather strange for a person of engineering training to be in an educational area and I'm not too sure at this point in life what I can contribute except more confusion perhaps a contribution at the General Electric company could make someday
within this puzzle would be an outgrowth of the diversity of the areas that the firm works in. In my own particular case my role for the firm is allegedly to plan the directions and the hardware to come out of these efforts for the diverse users. And I'm afraid I can do nothing to make you feel more comfortable with your problems and to be perfectly honest I can only really add to them. When you talk about educational communications it became apparent to me rather early in the game that one is not talking about a problem but a family of problems much akin to those that television faced early in its life here in this country and from an engineer's eye they problems seem to be one in which you have a need for distribution of information from a
single source to a multiplicity of receptors possibly a professor to a class or a I'm not well versed in the title structure of academia but at the next level of knowledge down to the lower levels of knowledge. Conversely you have a requirement for communication systems in the inverse direction but generally one would classify these as information retrieval systems. This is a need for the learning or to gain access to this wealth of information that's been generated over the ages and presumably stored indexed and filed somewhere within those to cause those we have a requirement of permanence and transience natured information. And then of course the last well not the last problem but another problem is communication between the different strata. On a parallel level the generation of information within this structure is
only a very small part of the problem. The most rigorous problem facing the industry today is really a distribution problem. And I submit to you that there is no one answer. It is too easy to fall into the. Easy way out. The simplified solution. An area of thinking in which you probe the problem superficially and while a light strikes you have the answer to all the problems it isn't solved any more than it's true for any other facet of life. What we are talking about here is trying to generate for you people a family of tools and leave it up to you which tool you apply in a given circumstance. It may be a crude analogy but probably the best one that an engineer would think of is the tool kit of a machinist he has a broad spectrum of highly precise tools and then he exercises the intelligent judgement of which one
to apply in any given circumstance and the quality of the output is then a direct function of the quality of his judgment and not the limitation of the tools. I submit to you that probably the only way this problem will ever be solved is if you in the educational world will take upon yourselves the burden of educating a new generation of specialist who are trained in engineering technology and education. My background in engineering alone leaves me lost in a morass. The people I talk to who are trained in education only have great difficulty in communicating to me what their needs and requirements are. If you can but generate that class of individual which can live in both worlds taught both languages with equal facility then and only then do you stand any possible chance of getting what you need
from. You. Thank you out our last speaker will be Dick Poole and. I think that our mission is a little different in the Litton Educational Systems Division. The mission is to. In our office the Office of learning resources to design and provide curricula for the youngsters in the Job Corps program. And I would like to start with a few figures also just to back up a moment that it's estimated that the production and distribution of knowledge in the United States. This is the total power takes up about 26 percent of our gross national product.
And it seems to me that one thing that is required at this time more than anything else is for. University people in industry to get together and to plan what they're going to do I don't think we can continue to do research and to provide our courses in what not on a random basis. I mean I think things have to be planned because there is really too much to do. And we're finding this out in the Job Corps and there are a number of things that we have to do we have to work with a number of youngsters who are culturally deprived and weak. There are lives and huge gaps of of and huge that look who and I in their training and we have to back up and we have to provide really basic. Knowledge for example
basic knowledge such as How do you read a newspaper. How do you spend your money. What is transportation. I mean how do you behave on a bus or an airplane. What is this world I mean where is Paris where is San Francisco. We have to talk about basic rights and responsibilities we have to talk about food and health and we find for example at this time its almost impossible to find anything for the 16 to 21 year old class and we have so many programs that are just repetitions of others so I think that we need to set up possibly regional learning resources centers within communities things like extensions of the Job Corps where young dropouts and culturally deprive youth will be able to go to make up for the local in a in a train.
To a. But we've heard some of the things that industry is doing to meet the needs of the educational community in terms of communications and information handling the storage. We have a few minutes left and there may be questions from the audience directed any specific member of the panel like Yuri. Oh. I'm not really sure I know all HOWARD Well about in the end I would suggest to you as a starting point. If you could possibly arrange an educational program in which the basic formal education in both areas could be presented to an individual
he then might be able to provide you with the information as to what he needs to go further. I am personally very. I was once said. I guess Neil is a best friends I have no knowledge in the area of teaching or presenting education to other people. My training is all engineering. If you can break down that kind of specialization in the educational realm not only for these needs I mean it goes much deeper than that in medicine the problem is even more acute. But if you can give the person with a rudiments of formal education in both areas he then can tell you where to go from there. Get into this brain. I think that this is this interface problem that the phrase from our engineering friends it seems to me that the universities have to provide this sort of an interface. They have to provide someone who is at least familiar enough
with the tools to know that they exist and yet who is recognized and respected on on their own local campus so that they can talk in this educational community perhaps who smart enough to realize that maybe he doesn't know the methodology and he certainly doesn't know the subject matter. But he's a he is this interface and it seems to me that our industry friends have to do the same thing. They've got to provide a mate who knows enough about education. But he was thoroughly recognised and respected within that company framework so that now you have some way for these people to really communicate and granted you're going through several human black boxes if you will in order to get from one place to the other. But I don't we just aren't on the same wavelength. There's no way for us all to get on the same wave and we've got to have these interfaces somewhere along the line makes me think.
I feel very strongly about I'm sure we all do you feel you've hit a very hot nail right on the head. I think that our engineering brothers are being are being far too gentle with us. I think that they have. They are what they are willing to say we don't understand you because we can't we cannot define you or me we cannot work with your needs because we can't understand the definitions of your needs. That's assuming that we can define them that we even know what our needs are. And we do not. This is a critical factor in it from the point of view of the engineer we other sloppiest kinds of people we can't even define our our. We can't even define our subject matter to say the least of the fine our needs. We don't know what's a good way to educate people we don't know even we don't we can't even if I were trying to do to educate them. We sort of automatically think in terms of getting across knowledge to them. We're not interested in that that's not education. That's trivia. We want to teach them how to think. But what do you mean by that. I haven't but I mean I have no idea how to go about doing it. So how can we conceivably a problem before. I would say
before we even worry about interfaces we we have to get some sort of order in our house so that we can talk to people who under who have order in their houses like the engineers. If I may let me let me try to give you a small appreciation of the problem. Engineering as opposed to science is a compromise art.. The engineers only reason for existence is to weigh the alternatives choose among the technology available to accomplish a specific task and theoretically make the wisest choice considering technology economics time and need. Now that's like being a Solomon and I'm not adequate to the task I assure you. But to make compromise judgements one must be versed in the factors that bear on the choice. We need information from you. An engineer is used to
approaching his problem stipulating its boundaries in mathematical terms and running to a solution and in some fields this is carried to an art where you get lazy you push a few buttons and the machine does the work for you but unless you establish the boundaries and unless you establish the directions in which the growth is to occur where dead in the water. I'd like to make a comment along this line. Typically industry does not understand your problems and basically we come up with you quite much with machines capability and we show you this equipment and you say it's great. What do we do with it. And we say well don't we don't know when to use it. And that's why we have to have better communications in the future but we need each other so that we do plan the equipment for specific uses not come up
with a piece of equipment and say Here it is. How do you use it. You live here caters science educators for that life. Well you replied looking for your life back. Yet there's no exchange. There may be something that was a reservoir of nolo that not only young people want to give direction for the same guy may be a void and everything would be nice somehow or other is a type of communication. Oh is this really that mission of your life
and comment on the world. Life here how to involve your top administration. This from University of California really tried to do something about my stand for having faculty being where their obligation to society that you taught seems to me have appeared in many meetings where we all sit around and talk about the need for this but the man who can do something about it we start the ball rolling in their lives and I never hear they really do this. You're darn right of course one has to always recognize that the faculty to be a faculty member in a university is probably the most. Well I guess the point of going to
where I can think of is an artistic role that you can play in our society today. And and I don't mean that I don't mean to use that term derogatorily even this is a good thing. So that in the end the administration simply cannot tell the faculty what to do that they wouldn't have in fact if they did because of the fact they would just leave instead they have 20 million students they can go to so they can't be told what to do. They cannot be told what their role shall be. They cannot be told how they should interact with society. All that can happen. All that the all that the administration can do is indicate the situation indicate the rule indicate the requests indicate directions that it might like and hope that there will be within the faculty groups leaders organizations who will have an attitude to carry it to carry it off in that direction. But it's not it just simply isn't a business and these are not employees in the sense that that industry has employees who have whom you can instruct to do things you cannot do that.
So you're right. We have no we have no overall administrative structure which is neat and definable and operational. But industry does. But this is also the stream of university so we must not we must not say well that's terrible let's change things. You know we must not we must leave it the way it is let it be messy let it be let let let it go off in all directions. That's that's what universities are all about. So I I deplore with you the problem. But I will not look for the answer in crystallizing the universities can I get into this for just a minute. We have we have a research park. This is you know one way that universities have tried to work with industry. If you can bring the industrial industrial research yours in relatively close geographical proximity to the university then your problems are solved. This just gets it
started. Now you've got somebody out here just a mile away as in our instance with perfectly good sound engineers and researchers but who wants to talk to and who do they go and talk to at the university. Well this is fine in many research parks have fallen on these rocks. People move in become disillusioned and everything goes haywire. The way we've tried to solve it is by another interface if you will with a group. Residing in this area who are. Conversant with the university faculty and know and who can for a fee. We're back to this again. Hire individuals on that faculty to work with this group up here that is now in residence. Well needless to say you don't have this for very long before they start to spread out because not everybody can come in and build a building in the research park. There are other smaller industries that need the same sort
of service and so the first thing you know is in our particular instance they're serving more people outside the research park than they are in. But again it's an interface that somebody who can go and study their problems come back and match it up with what they know about the university. Go tap the guy or the group who can help solve this specific problem for this specific industry. And I bet you can't get away from these interface. I just got to exist in some form. I don't interact with them so I'd like to throw just one small point in here. Sometimes we get so enamored about talking about that great system in the sky that's going to solve all these problems. And it's important that we keep our eye on this objective. But it seems to me and to my colleagues that you've got to begin. And in this respect our hats are off to the end E.B.
ECF committee educational Communications Services Committee systems committee because it appears to us at least it's another beginning. It's something that can be done to utilize today some things which are available today that will do some good tomorrow without waiting until we figure out how to build a bridge across the Grand Canyon. There are a lot of things that can be done. There are some real opportunities I believe if the. Industrial representatives will get out and play that catalytic role with the universities to bring together universities and it's like one small example. One of our people in a big Midwestern city visited just to introduce himself to the president of one of the universities in his town and touched on some of the things which we can do today in the area of sharing facilities through communications.
And the Dean interrupted and he said there is a meeting going on in the next room right now of a committee of my faculty who have been meeting for three years to talk about this and they haven't done anything any talk about the arms that's going to get busy and I think that this is the kind of role that whether we are engineering oriented or sales or in or anything else that industry can work with education. We will learn to understand each other by working with each other. And I don't think anybody is going to be able to write out a manual on this is how you interface with an educator. You get me figured out yourself. If I may say a few words still that Mike and I are innocent as chairman I think now that the need for communications is growing and industry recognizes as a market and an area for profitability they're going to take a more active part in actively seeking out the requirements of the educator bringing educators into industry taking people who have been
former educators retired people and using their capabilities. Originally from the industry point of view the market started out. We had equipment that we sell to other markets that were akin to this one to the commercial broadcasters as the market opened in the educational field. We shifted that equipment over. Now we see the need is greater. The requirements are beginning to be defined and as the market gets larger industry will do a lot to serve this market as a market on its own. Now I think I want to thank all the members of the panel. I think we've had a very interesting discussion and our time just got up. Thank you. You all. I think you heard him. Definitely I felt the other night.
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Series
1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention
Episode
Educational Communications - A Look At The Future
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-vq2s9224
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Description
Description
No description available
Date
1965-11-01
Topics
Environment
Public Affairs
Media type
Sound
Duration
01:03:52
Credits
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 4358 (University of Maryland)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:30:00?
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Citations
Chicago: “1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention; Educational Communications - A Look At The Future,” 1965-11-01, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-vq2s9224.
MLA: “1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention; Educational Communications - A Look At The Future.” 1965-11-01. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-vq2s9224>.
APA: 1965 National Association of Educational Broadcasters Convention; Educational Communications - A Look At The Future. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-vq2s9224