SECOND INTERNATIONAL HARVARD CONFERENCE ON INTERNET & SOCIETY  may 26-29, 1998

Schools and Communities in Cyberspace: Technology is offering our children an international form of social interaction. But do all children benefit equally? by Kris Manjapra See also Interview with Margaret Riel. Cambridge, April 1998 - Technology may be a tool, but it is a social one. Margaret Riel, the Associate Director of the Center for Collaborative Research at the University of California at Irvine, speaks of the technological society as one empowered for social change. "When we make the world small, we can help one another. Large scale problems cannot be addressed, they feel too large. But connections among small groups can often solve big problems in new ways", she says. Once upon a time, it took a diplomatic corps convening in secret rooms and corridors to address the "big problems" to which Professor Riel refers. Today, it's taking children. In cyberspace, innovative international programs are finally allowing children to debate and solve big problems. The I*earn web page is an international project-based meeting ground for children and teachers from over forty countries around the globe. The page links to a large number of student-initiated international projects, each showing a stunning degree of social responsibility and critical thought. Riel's contribution to the site at www.iearn.org/circles, for example, is devoted to challenging and resolving concepts of cultural, race and international identity. In Riel's program, schools from around the world are grouped into small project-oriented teams. Riel explains, "We need a much wider and richer understanding of the multiple perspectives that come from life in different conditions." Before the introduction of the interactive, unbounded world of the Internet, a child's international education began with grade school geography and ended with textbook history. But there is life elsewhere. Riel suggests that technology both exposes children to the life of fellow international students and sensitizes the young to the "multiple perspectives" of international, even intercultural, life. Such interchange does much to shape the way a child sees him or herself in relation to the world, says Riel. Yet, before people jump to praise technology's promise for a new type of education for our children, Riel cautions that computers risk becoming tools of the entitled. "The disparity of public education is shameful," she remarks. A recent Vanderbilt University survey shows that 30% of black children have computers at home, compared to 80% of their white classmates. Computer access within schools does not demonstrate such stark disparity, yet the current situation is far from equitable. What is the solution? Government programs, perhaps. But equal access to the powerful, identity-shaping tool of technology remains very much a drawing-board plan instead of a plan of action. The "Next Door to Everyone" session (Concurrent Session D14) of the Second International Harvard Conference on Internet & Society is devoted to our children and the challenges they face in accessing and using the net. Professor Margaret Riel will be joined by Professor Ronald Bailey from Northeastern University and Robert Tinker of the Concord Consortium in addressing these issues. "At present, we are failing too large a percentage of our population," says Riel. "I believe that a central reason is that we are not creating for these students a sense of community." Cyberspace offers our children the promise of a world community. Exactly how to use this new community and how to make access equitable for all children are the questions for current debate. Kris Manjapra (Harvard College 2000), concentrates in Economic History and Philosophy. He is Executive Editor of Diversity & Distinction Magazine, a publication that features the diversity of cultures and opinions of students at Harvard. Mr. Manjapra works as an intern at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he is learning the power of cyberspace in shaping modern life. In the summer of 1998, Mr. Manjapra will be conducting independent research in New Delhi, India, on the effectiveness of government-sponsored education on slum youth. His goals are to travel, understand the world, and help enrich and empower children.