Commerce Secretary Evans and Other Senior Administration Officials To Release Visions for Future Technologies That Can Transform Education and Workforce Training

Tuesday, September 17, 2002
10:30 – 11:30 a.m. Secretary’s Conference Room, 5th floor
U.S. Department of Commerce, 14th and Constitution Ave. Washington, D.C.

Secretary of Commerce Don Evans will be joined by Education Under Secretary Eugene W. Hickok and National Science Foundation Director Rita Colwell at a press conference to release a compilation of visions prepared by leaders in industry, academia and government on how emerging technologies—in development today for a wide variety of applications—might be harnessed to revolutionize the education and training landscape. Several of the authors will participate in the press conference, including representatives from Harvard University, Microsoft, WorldCom, the National Education Association (NEA) and the advanced theme park ride design company, Kleiser-Walczak.

Fourteen visions, published as “2020 Visions: Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies,” provide a diverse array of views on how students, workers and life-long learners may learn in the future. These visions:
· use vignettes set in the future to enable the reader to see the technologies and applications through the eyes of the user;
· examine how these technologies can expand learning opportunities for those with unique needs;
· provide an overview of the technologies and pose stimulating questions about their adoption and use;
· discuss how these technologies could revolutionize teaching and provide new, exciting and rewarding opportunities for teachers;
· show how these technologies can enable doctors to hone life-saving skills in realistic settings without putting patients at risk;
· put forth their opinions on what will and will not come to pass; and
· offer cautionary tales that should serve to remind us that we must strive to apply the power of technology in ways that empower learners and teachers, enlighten the mind, and enrich all of our lives.

These visions are intended to contribute to our understanding of the potential of these technologies to foster innovation in our learning enterprise, the research that is needed, and the challenges that lie ahead.

Vision Authors

Technologies and Learning
Ruzena Bajcsy, Director, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, University of California at Berkeley

Teaching in 2025: Education and Technology Transformed
Vinton Cerf, Senior Vice President for Internet Architecture and Technology, WorldCom, and
Caleb Schutz, President, Marco Polo Foundation, President, WorldCom Foundation, Vice President, WorldCom

A Day in the Life of a Young Learner: A 2020 Vision
Milton Chen, Executive Director and
Stephen D. Arnold, Vice Chair, George Lucas Educational Foundation

Vignettes About the Future of Learning Technologies
Chris Dede, Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies, Harvard Graduate School of Education

A Vision for Life Long Learning – Year 2020
Randy Hinrichs, Group Research Manager, Learning Science and Technology, Microsoft Research,
with Introduction by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation

Playing Games to Learn Complex Skills: Computer Simulation for Medic Training
Gerald A. Higgins, SimQuest International, LLC and the Federation of American Scientists

Next Generation Learning Systems and the Role of Teachers
The Learning Federation

2020 Classroom
Ulrich Neumann and Chris Kyriakakis, Integrated Media Systems Center, University of Southern California

A Curmudgeon’s Vision for Technology in Education
Randy Pausch, Co-Director, Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University
Encompassing Education
Diana Walczak, Artistic Director and Cofounder, Kleiser-Walczak

Future of Education = Technology + Teachers
R. Stanley Williams, H-P Fellow, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

A Visit to the Springdale School System in 2012
John I. Wilson, Executive Director, National Education Association

Motivational Technology
Will Wright, Chief Designer and Co-Founder, Maxis

The Last Teacher
Michael Zyda, Director, The MOVES Institute, Naval Postgraduate School, and
Douglas H. Bennett, Study Director, National Research Council’s Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board