Life

The paper demonstrates how the Internet can be used to enable people to become aware of, and

develop their learning potential.It also examines some of the problems of the Internet and shows

how as it becomes more commercial it can also exclude,as well as include, thoses who seek to learn.

Introduction

This article examines the current and potential role of the Internet in lifelong learning.

Taking the UK as an example of Western societies, approximately 3% of the

population have access to the Internet either at home or at work.As Banbury

points out, this does not compare particularly favourably with the availability of other

household appliances such as the telephone (85%) or television and radio (nearly

100%). The provision of on-line services, however, is currently growing at the rate of

about 100% a year, reaching into the 22% of UK homes that possess computers, and

connecting into institutions of higher education, further and continuing education and

into schools. British Interactive Broadcasting will soon launch digital satellite services

which, apart from providing 200 television channels, will bring the Internet and email

within the reach of 22 million UK households. Similar ventures will introduce home

digital technology across the globe. The central issues, however, revolve not simply

around the extent to which computers are networked together, but are concerned with

how the technology can be used in ways that invigorate and empower the learner in

formal, informal and non-formal educational settings.

Clearly, in part because of the phenomenon known as technophobia, it is also

recognized that not all learners appreciate studying through the medium of information

technology. Some may experience distinct feelings of alienation, that is, feelings of

powerlessness, and of being controlled by the technology, rather than using it for their

own means. This article, then, will examine some features of the empowerment,

alienation and dichotomy that seem nested in electronic communication interaction.

What is the Internet ?

The Internet is simply a network of hundreds of thousands of computers all over the

world, connected in a way that lets other computers access information on them. So if

a computer is connected to the Internet, in principle, it can be connected to any other

computer on the network. Today, the Internet comprises more than 45000 regional,

David Gray is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Surrey. He is

currently engaged in developing work-based learning national and internationalnetworks,which connect more than 30 million people in over

200 countries. This includes organizations, schools, universities, companies, governments,

groups and individuals.

The fastest growing and most versatile part of the Internet is the World Wide Web

(Web) which oÐ"Ґ ers learners enormous opportunities for learning, including accessing

information on formal educational courses, and collecting an unheard of wealth of data

and information on a seemingly endless range of subjects.

Other growing, and potentially educationally powerful, parts of the Internet are

computer and video conferencing. Computer conferencing may be synchronous (all

participants being on-line at the same time) or asynchronous, whereby the system

archives all email messages and displays them to all participants, if and when they log

onto the system. Video conferencing allows learners from across the globe to see each

other while they communicate, potentially, at least, a more invigorating experience

than email communication.

The Internet in learning: the supreme tool of self-direction?

If the basis of lifelong learning is self-directed learning (Brockett and Hiemstra, 1991:

24Ð'± 33), then the Internet could probably be classiÐ'® ed as one of the most powerful and

important self-directed learning tools in existence. Let us take a hypothetical scenario.

A manual worker who left school at the age of 16 with negligible formal qualiÐ'® cations

has developed a lifelong passion for the game of chess. Last year his teenage son

persuaded him to buy a computer. Since then, further money has been spent going ` online’

through the purchase of a modem and a subscription to an Internet service

provider. At Ð'® rst, our worker resented spending the money, but now Ð'® nds that the

Internet can help him in his passion for chess. Firstly, he uses one of the Web search

engines to look up the word ` chess ’ (a search engine is a software tool that allows the user

to input keywords, which the engine looks up in its index and displays all global Web

pages containing those words). Using the WebCrawler search engine, for example, he

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