I think this is an indication of the importance of networks in the modes in sharing in the development and use of resources. Am I correct in that? year, Mr: RHODES. Yes; that satellite went functional sometime last 1979, and that is one of the reasons why the PBS network can now run what is called the core schedule, which means, give or take a little bit, that the whole of the country is able to see the same programs at least four nights a week, although they are not necessarily in the same order. This is increasing the audience. Mr. BROWN. I understand a similar breakthrough might occur with regard to cable television with the development of a network capability through satellite. Mr. RHODES. I think if we could understand that we would be very happy. One of the great points of conversation is the effect of the various forms of cable and satellite on the PBS network. Mr. BROWN. You wish you knew what the result would be. Mr. RHODES. We would love to know what the result would be. Mr. BROWN. You wish Congress would help define the roles a little bit. Mr. RHODES. You can say that. It gives a whole new meaning to the word "broadcast." It is easier to broadcast than it was. Mr. BROWN. To what degree? Let me make this comment first. The Foundation itself publishes a very fine publication; other agencies of the Federal Government engage in the same kind of activity in disseminating the results of the progress of science. The Smithsonian puts out a very excellent publication. To what degree are they utilizing them as a common resource? Is there any sharing in the development of the materials and programs with these agencies of the Government? Mr. RHODES. Let me answer obliquely. The problem of television is not a shortage of ideas for programs. It is which of these ideas to take and then how to do them well. It really isn't a case of, as I say, shortage of programs. Mr. BROWN. Dr. Bloom? Dr. BLOOM. One of the very good things NSF has done of this kind is that they have encouraged a number of programs which lead to techniques for replicating exhibits or doing the research for an exhibit in one place and making duplicates of it in other places. This can be, of course, very cost effective, but once again, the budgetary constraints on NSF's public understanding programs have been so tight that there hasn't been room to make much progress even through experimentation. Mr. BROWN. Would museums benefit from a capability of interconnecting their high-powered exhibit ideas through some sort of a television network? I am trying to foresee down the road a few years as satellite communication becomes more feasible, more economical, and the number of channels perhaps increases? Is there some way in which the best museum exhibit, say, in Philadelphia can be viewed in Los Angeles or some other area in this same fashion or at least be used as a model for the duplication? Dr. BLOOM. It could be used as a model for duplication. One nice thing about a museum is that it allows one to touch and experience real objects and you lose this through the printed media and television. However, cooperative programs between museums and television are in progress right now and are supported by the NSF. Mr. BROWN. Gentlemen, you have presented some fascinating possibilities here and ones that we are very much interested in. The problems that we face in the modern world is that science and technology produce both agony and ecstacy, and I am not sure where the emphasis is coming from, the agony or ecstacy at this point but it is obvious there is this increasing demand for greater comprehension of what science and technology are doing in modern society. It is important that we seek the best possible ways to satisfy this growing public need. I think we would be highly unwise to look at it through narrower channels. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your contribution. Now, the last thing this morning, here for a short presentation, is Dr. Dustin Heuston, of the World Institute for Computer Assisted Teaching. Dr. Heuston, we welcome you. STATEMENT OF DR. DUSTIN HEUSTON, CHAIRMAN, WORLD INSTITUTE FOR COMPUTER ASSISTED TEACHING Dr. HEUSTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make one brief comment on Dr. Rutherford's testimony. I happened to run a school for almost a decade specializing in education for young women, from kindergarten through high school, and the one thing that we learned as we attempted to operate a science curriculum was that we had to go younger and younger in order to have an impact. As a matter of fact, we ended up pulling in many of the programs the National Science Foundation sponsored, and that made the difference to us in terms of whether or not we had science graduates. When I took the school over, we had almost no science graduates, but within 4 or 5 years we had many women science graduates. We had to push the girls into laboratories as early as the third grade to have that impact. Mr. BROWN. Did you say you were assisted by NSF programs? Dr. HEUSTON. We took the programs of Dr. Zacharias and others and the mathematics programs we took from Sanford University. We took the work that had gone out for about 10 years and implemented that into our programs. Without that we would have been unable to substantially have that impact. The second comment I would like to make about the testimony was the one thing that didn't come up today but became clear as we produced our students. It isn't just science we are producing, and it isn't just a knowledgeable public, but we have to produce the necessary scaffolding for the students to get jobs if we are going to support the establishment. Some of the sociologists have pointed out that for a third of the century the dominant industry was U.S. Steel and the labor market was the equivalent of U.S. Steel. The middle third was General Motors, and again the labor market had to be better educated, but not that much better. The final third was IBM. What we found in our institute in Utah is that we cannot hire a substantial percentage of the population although we are the fastest growing industry in the valley because they do not have the necessary skills in mathematics and science. Thus ultimately the labor market will have a strong impact in driving our educational curriculum. If we do not get the schools into mathematics and science, the national growth will be restricted. Let me tell you about the video program. You see on that table a silver instrument made by Magnavox, which is a subsidiary of North American Philips. I will hold the disk up in the air. It looks like a long playing record. Two new technologies will impact education. One is the use of the laser and the second is the microprocessor. We are doing work with the National Science Foundation making certain that, as the technology develops and is put out in the consumer markets, that, in fact, the industries using it will be thinking of education in their planning. We constantly had streams of visitors last year observing the results of our NSF research. We had the head of research laboratories from Philips, we had Texas Instruments, and we had representatives from many corporations visiting to view the NSF work, to see if they could modify their instruments they are producing for the consumer markets so it could be usable for schools. One thing that the disk will do that is very unusual is to combine the power of the three most powerful educational technologies. The first is the book itself, and we forget that the book is a function of the printing press, or a technology. The second is movies or television, and this is very important as we will show you very briefly here for emotional interest and for gaining attention. Then thirdly, it will combine the power of the computer in a useful combination that can produce interactivity and get the student involved and make him an activist instead of a passive observer. In terms of productivity, we can introduce a computer into the interaction. Our research suggests that such computer interactions can produce a minimum of 25 times the productive use of a learner's time. It would appear in the latest studies that in the educational system as a whole that 42 percent of the 17 year old blacks in America are functionally illiterate. One way of viewing these statistics is to suggest that their time has been used very unproductively, and that just putting teachers on video tapes to talk to them and make the teacher more productive will have very little impact. The question is how to get the students involved. To do this we must concentrate on learner productivity instead of teacher productivity, and this is where the video disc will play a very important role. The significant thing is that two large studies-and these are very little known statistics-demonstrate that for every hour a learner puts into the classroom, he or she can only have 10 seconds of help or personal instruction. That is the national average. So if you are going to look at mathematics, the student has only one-fifth of that. So for every hour a student spends in mathematics instruction in a school situation, he gets 2 seconds of individual help. I am going to show you now some examples of what makes a video disk unique (demonstrating). It will sell for from $5 to $25. It is pressed like a record read by a laser. It can store 54,000 colored pictures or photographs or graphics, however you want to use it, in a frame like this. What we are trying to illustrate here is that you can put an almost infinite number of colored photographs in; whereas, it would be very expensive in a normal text situation to print many color photographs. Here we have run a series to show the development of cells. We have taken a whole series of colored slides. So you begin to sense that you could have 54,000 single frames, and therefore store an enormous amount of information. Let me take you to a movie segment to show you why just storing information in the form of a book or text is not adequate, and, conversely, the power a movie has. Here we are trying to motivate students to really become excited about the DNA that they are learning about. [Shows on the television screen.] Now, that is an example of the power of a movie or television format to provide extreme motivation and interest when you are working with what could be very dry materials. When you go to straight television or a movie for mathematics, let me show you the advantages. We take a section in attempting to explain some very complicated aspects of RNA and DNA, protein production, and a portion of the DNA strands separate. [Shows on the television screen.] Now, what you just saw was a very complicated movie with many new phrases that the normal student would miss. As a result, he or she goes to a teacher to get it unscrambled, and if it is in a television format it is hard to go back and replay. Because we are using a laser as a stylus, you never wear anything out. More importantly, I am going to ask the demonstrator to go through a whole sequence of still frames to help you understand what really went on. I don't want you to read them or anything, but to give you a feel for what the individual disk will be able to do. It will be able to give you practice with questions and answers. It will be able to put in many graphics, rules, and examples. The interesting thing here is that the framework evolving here in the description is again a function of earlier National Science Foundation research. There was a large program built around the TICCIT program which used colored television as the output for mathematics and English in conjunction with a computer. As a result, a great deal was learned on how to put colored still frames on a TV set and mix it with motion pictures and video tape, and the National Science Foundation grant was a forerunner in the use of this approach. These many slides represent all of the imbedded information that was given to you as the speaker was speaking, but used the term and concepts too quickly for you to understand. Now, we have put in over 600 still frames, many of them to help clarify what was said. We have only taken 20 seconds of running time to do this. So now this disc is 29 minutes and 40 seconds long, and the subject matter experts tell us that we have put in approximately a third of a biology course. Thus we have demonstrated a prototype of what will be. It will be coupled with a home TV set shortly. The student will be able to ask questions and the machine will direct them if they do not understand them, and they will be able to take advantage of the interaction and processing intelligence that the computer can give. Mr. BROWN. That is a fascinating demonstration, Dr. Heuston. The question that comes to my mind is the amount of resources and skill required to do such a program which you have described. I have heard it said that the skilled person-hours, however, required to do this are going to be extremely large, if we are talking about the software aspect. Dr. HEUSTON. Yes. Mr. BROWN. And I would like to ask you if you could give us some indication of the amount of hours that go into creating the product? Dr. HEUSTON. I think a good rule of thumb is to say you will spend about probably twice as much capital in producing a disc as you would a straight rate movie or video tape. That means you would be doubling your expenditure. The important thing to realize is there are a number of subjects for which we need to build that scaffold that I was talking about. You will need excellent courses in basic mathematics. You need excellent courses in basic sciences. So there is one large expenditure period, but after that you now have the ability to replicate the equivalent of a great instructor being present with that student, not only talking to him, but now interacting with him. Let me give you one example from mathematics which we are working on now in our own research to give you an example of how this can work. If I were to give you a subtraction problem and I said take 90 from 127-If you have a pencil you might try this.—and I gave you this answer, 170, you would say there is a great problem. Now, in fact, our research has shown us some extraordinary things. There are over 60 cognitive errors that students make in subtraction. One is called a "zero" bug and another is a "lesser than greater." In this case the student took a zero from the seven and made a zero and two from nine instead of nine from two because it was a smaller number from the larger. Teachers do not have the time, as our statistics suggested, to find out what the student is doing. With the computer technology you will be able to discover that that child has a zero bug or "lesser than greater" error in seconds. So you will have the equivalent of an expert diagnosis to give help to the student to unscramble his or her problems. I have a family story. While we were doing the cognitive research, my daughter Hilary had a zero bug. In the school system it took 7 weeks for them to find it. We could have done it in a few seconds if we had the technology present. It is that kind of leverage you are talking about in helping children get out of their cognitive errors. This technology will make it happen. We need one round of good capital to produce the basic research examples, get them to the publishers, and have them then start taking them out, and then it becomes a self-replicating problem. Mr. BROWN. It seems awfully simple, and I think you are revolutionizing education. Dr. HEUSTON. Yes; I think that is what we are trying to do. Dr. HEUSTON. They will be right there. I don't want my children to be free of adult models, and the teachers will be there. As the NSF ticket project demonstrated in its preliminary form, which in turn led to this, what will happen is that the teacher will shift his or her role slightly to becoming a supporter or coach where, together, they are taking on the material, and the teacher has time to be far more |