Legislature(1997 - 1998)
03/20/1997 03:05 PM Senate HES
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
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= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
JOINT MEETING
HOUSE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES
STANDING COMMITTEE
SENATE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES
STANDING COMMITTEE
March 20, 1997 - 3:05 p.m.
HOUSE MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Con Bunde, Chairman
Representative Joe Green, Vice Chairman
Representative Al Vezey
Representative Fred Dyson
Representative J. Allen Kemplen
Representative Tom Brice
HOUSE MEMBERS ABSENT
Representative Brian Porter
SENATE MEMBERS PRESENT
None
SENATE MEMBERS ABSENT
Senator Gary Wilken, Chairman
Senator Loren Leman, Vice Chairman
Senator Lyda Green
Senator Jerry Ward
Senator Johnny Ellis
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
PRESENTATION: EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
PREVIOUS ACTION
No previous action to record
WITNESS REGISTER
Alan C. November, Senior Partner
Educational Renaissance Planners
P.O. Box 812380
Wellesley, MA 02181
Telephone: (847) 475-3250
POSITION STATEMENT: Provided information on education
technology.
ACTION NARRATIVE
TAPE 97-20, SIDE A
Number 0001
CHAIRMAN CON BUNDE called the joint meeting of the House/Senate
Health, Education and Social Services Standing Committees to order
at 3:05 p.m. House committee members present at the call to order
were Representatives Bunde, Green, Dyson, and Kemplen.
Representatives Vezey and Brice arrived at 3:08 p.m. and 3:11 p.m.,
respectively. Members absent were Representative Porter. Chairman
Bunde noted the absence of all Senate committee members due to a
legislative caucus.
CHAIRMAN BUNDE announced the first order of business was a briefing
on educational technology by Alan C. November.
Number 0067
ALAN C. NOVEMBER, Senior Partner, Educational Renaissance Planners,
opened his remarks by stating that approximately a year ago he
conducted a three-hour workshop on the same topic at the National
Speakers of the House Conference, where their number one issue was
"What is the Intersection of Education Technology and the Economy."
He announced that he would focus his remarks on what has happened
in the economy in terms of technology and skills, as well as how
education technology can help position the state of Alaska to be
competitive in the global economy.
Number 0217
MR. NOVEMBER referred to a cover story from the September 19, 1994,
issue of Fortune Magazine entitled "The End of the Job." The jist
of the story is that a hundred years ago, 80 percent of the
population in the United States lived and worked on farms but
today, it is down to 1.9 percent. Technology - the tractor and
other accompanying agriculture technologies - surplused most of the
people in the economy the United States used to have. The tractor
salesmen probably didn't understand that the very tool they were
going to sell to the farmers was going to wipe out the community
and send the children away from the farm. Most likely people
didn't understand what was going on while it was happening. Only
now in hindsight can the pattern be put together and it's still
going on. He explained that last year, John Deere put global
positioning satellite technology on their tractors. This will
eliminate the need for the farmer to drive the tractor around the
field because the satellite will know exactly where it is at and
will move itself.
Number 0312
MR. NOVEMBER noted that Fortune Magazine says there is currently
enough technology in the United States to do to the job what the
tractor did to the farmer. He shared that in the 1970s, IBM built
a 50-story tower in Chicago for 10,000 workers. A few months ago,
80 percent of the 4,000 people left were told to go home and that
IBM was selling the building. He interviewed the personnel
director to find out what the impact is on people when told the
building is going to be sold, the structure of work is being taken
away, and they have to go home.
Number 0380
CHAIRMAN BUNDE asked Mr. November to clarify what he meant by "have
to go home."
MR. NOVEMBER responded the people were still employed, but would
work at home. He explained that IBM has a profit motive, besides
quality and it has been their experience that when people are sent
home to work, productivity goes up between 20 percent and 100
percent for the people who can make that transition. However,
there are a number of well-educated, highly-successful people who
become paralyzed when told the organization where they have worked
is being taken away and they have to become self-directed, self-managed and int
year, it will be the policy of the Motorola Corporation to move 40
percent of their workers in Chicago home.
Number 0461
MR. NOVEMBER encouraged committee members to think about the impact
of technology on society. He asked, "Is this end-of-the-job
concept real? Is it possible that IBM and Motorola -- and by the
way, you can throw in AT&T, also -- is it possible that we really
do have enough technology so that an overwhelming majority of
people in the United States are not going to be embedded in a
higher (indisc.) structure of work, but will be required by the
global economy to be independent, self-directed, self-managed and
responsible for the quality of their own work? And I'm here to
make the case that this is at least good enough to criticize - and
I actually believe it.... The end of the job is why I think we've
got to take a good, hard look at schools and technology."
MR. NOVEMBER referred to an overhead and said that in 1973, 16
percent of 18- to 24-year-old individuals could not earn a
sustainable job of $14,483, inflation adjusted to 1993. In 1994,
that number jumped from 16 percent to 41 percent. He asked how
many committee members knew of an 18- to 24-year-old person living
at home. He noted there were plenty of jobs available in the
service economy, but the problem is that many of those jobs are
low-waged. Research indicates that 80 percent of emerging jobs
will not require a university degree, but more than high school;
e.g., community college, technical college, et cetera. However,
around the Chicago area, 37 percent of all students enrolled in
community colleges already have a university degree; the national
average is 30 percent. He suggested that committee members
research the statistics for Alaska, as he didn't think the Alaska
State Legislature wanted to support higher education at the
university level and then pay to educate kids again at the
community college level. He said it wasn't originally set up that
way, but because the economy has changed, community colleges in the
United States tend to be much more responsive to changes in the
economy than the university system.
Number 0714
MR. NOVEMBER referred to a book published by an organization of
national superintendents which states that "truly educated people
of the next century will not apply for a job." This is a departure
from what was said a few years ago. He said there is a problem
however, and explained that schools are designed to prepare
children to eventually get a job by telling them what to do, when
to do it, where to do it and how well they're doing it. Because of
the changes in the global economy, people who can create their own
work now have an increasing window of economic opportunity and
people who have only been educated to apply for a job, have a
decreasing window of opportunity. He stressed that it's not about
simply adding technology to schools; the economy has fundamentally
changed in terms of the structure and the social contract of what
is now called work. He believes that Fortune Magazine is correct -
the job is finished as a social contract for work just as the
farmer was finished - the difference being that now there's enough
data available to predict what's going to happen.
Number 0835
MR. NOVEMBER stated that his next remarks would be based on
education technology and the concept called "The End of the Job"
which he felt was the biggest phenomena in terms of the global
workforce, that is a function of all these technologies. Teaching
children computers is very important, but only teaching them
computers would be the equivalent of teaching tractor literacy in
the 1940s. It's now about giving children a much broader, deeper
education than ever before.
Number 0889
REPRESENTATIVE JOE GREEN asked if people were going back into the
community college system because they were taking skills jobs
versus knowledge jobs?
MR. NOVEMBER responded that based on conversations with community
college presidents in the Chicago area, many of the people were
going back to community colleges to get technical skills, which he
thinks could have been gotten in high school.
REPRESENTATIVE GREEN asked, "If that's the case, if that's where
they're finding work rather than going to the job market, by
increasing the amount of education and depth - I think was the
broader spectrum and a little deeper - what happens to this market
that has shifted from skills that they could have learned in high
school? What's causing this?"
MR. NOVEMBER cited the example of his secretary, whom he has seen
once in the last five years. She lives in Massachusetts and he
lives in Illinois; she does not have a college education, but has
a computer, modem, printer, fax machine and other equipment at
home. She previously worked as his secretary when he was working
with the public schools of Wellesley, Massachusetts, and she now
knows enough about information technology to manage her own
business. While she made $8.00 an hour when she had a "job" job,
she now bills her time at $25.00 an hour and has clients up and
down the Eastern Seaboard.
Number 1008
MR. NOVEMBER said another example is the John Deere Company which
almost went bankrupt in the 1980s. Added technology didn't quite
make the difference, so they put the assembly line workers in
charge of the quality of their own work and fired the middle
managers. The quality at the John Deere Company has skyrocketed
and the company is making more money. When a welder was asked why
he didn't work as well before, his response was, "They used to
tell me what to do, when to do it - I parked my brain at the gate
and then went in." The difference is that now he's responsible for
the quality of his own work.
REPRESENTATIVE GREEN commented that the new world of jobs does not
necessarily require deeper and broader college education, but
rather more innovation at high school and junior college levels.
MR. NOVEMBER responded that 80 percent of the jobs in the United
States will not require a university degree.
Number 1106
CHAIRMAN BUNDE referred to Mr. November's remarks that people won't
need a college degree but will need more than high school and said,
"I'm not sure we can do this vocational and still establish basic
literacy in high schools."
MR. NOVEMBER stated it was his opinion that a great deal of
community college courses can be taught in high school. He spoke
of the concept called "middle college" where potential eighth and
ninth grade dropouts are given a community college experience at
that age rather than waiting for them to drop out of high school.
Research on the "middle college" indicates that it's one of the
best investments a state can make. He believes there should be a
fax machine in every kindergarten classroom and that five-year-old
children should be taught to draw their questions and how to use
information technologies to seek information beyond the four walls
of the classroom.
Number 1216
MR. NOVEMBER related that he works at Dalton (ph) School in New
York City which is one of the richest private schools in the United
States. Students are engaged directly with the Hubble telescope
through the Internet, and are getting massive amounts of
information about the universe. The expectation in physics is that
students at Dalton (ph) School should be able to map parts of the
universe that no one has even mapped, with high end astrophysics
tools generated by the federal government.
Number 1248
MR. NOVEMBER continued, "What I'm proposing is that if schools had
access to information technologies -- and by the way, I want to
frame this as carefully as I can. The real revolution is not
technology; it's information and communication - what's flowing
through the technologies - that's what is important. The quality
of the information and the quality of the communication and what we
do with it ... So, the question I asked is, 'What information do
you want students in Alaska to have access to in K-12? What tools
do you want them to have access to? What relationships?'"
Number 1315
MR. NOVEMBER stated, "What I'm suggesting is if you look at this
revolution as one where people get access to information that
they've never been able to access before, with the tools to make
meaning out of that information, we can move down the expectations
that we used to have in graduate schools or universities."
Number 1333
CHAIRMAN BUNDE interjected that at one time a high school diploma
was a requirement simply to keep people off the job market because
there were so many applicants and so few jobs. So everyone got a
high school diploma. Then a college degree was required. Based on
Mr. November's comments, he felt there will be a lot of frightened
people because they won't be able to compete. He didn't know if
society will accept that.
MR. NOVEMBER acknowledged that may be true and added, "But not to
prepare this generation to compete in the global economy -- give
them powerful information and communication skills -- using your
same dollar rather than using dollars over and over again, I think
would be a loss for the state of Alaska."
Number 1395
REPRESENTATIVE GREEN commented that one of the problems with a
student advancing beyond their grade level, was their scientific
background or ability to do things far exceeded their maturity
level. He recognized there are certain young people who are
extremely intelligent and capable, but the masses are not. He
wondered if most people were mature enough at 18 or 19 years of age
to even know what they were seeing in terms of the Hubble and other
technologies.
MR. NOVEMBER interjected that it is maintained that children in the
"middle college" do much better because they are treated as adults.
He said states like Ohio and Texas are spending $.5 billion and
$1.5 billion respectively, in educational technology, but
ironically it's being driven by the business community not by
education because the business community feels compelled to have a
prepared workforce.
Number 1500
REPRESENTATIVE FRED DYSON asked how much band width per student,
classroom or school should be provided to meet the needs of the
next 25-30 years?
MR. NOVEMBER responded, "I can tell you what I think you're going
to need in two years.... I'm going to be meeting at Stanford with
a company called Net Schools, which is a spinoff of a bunch of IBM
people, and here's the latest technology today. It's infrared. A
lot of laptops now come standard with infrared built in.... The
industry knows that a room like this is going to have an infrared
antennae in the ceiling. Infrared goes 30 feet and so the emerging
model is every kid having a laptop with infrared - and by the way
that's 4 megabytes of band width which is more than a T-1 which is
1.4 megabyes - so this company, Net Schools, already has schools in
the United States lined up to buy a laptop for every student to be
able to get them access to information all over the world. Just as
a point of reference, 1.4 megabytes allows you two-way interactive
videoconferencing -- four of them concurrently. That's probably
not enough. It's 4 megabytes from infrared to the antennae. What
will slow you down is the connection from the school to the
Internet. So a T-1 line is not enough. Today, we would probably
be talking about a T-3." In response to the question about the
needs 30 years from now, he said the basic assumptions of
Microsoft, in terms of design, is that band width is unlimited.
REPRESENTATIVE DYSON reaffirmed that T-3 for every school would
meet the needs in two years.
MR. NOVEMBER said that Alaska's schools and districts are extreme
because of the rural nature, but he thought that T-3 would meet the
needs.
Number 1650
CHAIRMAN BUNDE observed that hardware was the easy part even though
it cost money, but the concept that Mr. November was speaking to
was an "entrepreneurial spirit" and he questioned how that could be
taught or injected. He maintains that for some people there is a
need to "interface"; in other words, to touch, feel or have some
personal contact, which is work for a number of people in our
society.
MR. NOVEMBER said that many of the people interviewed with IBM
professed to having more social interactions after leaving IBM than
when they were working the conventional job with IBM. For example,
when a person goes to work everyday with the same people, their
social interactions are limited to the same group. Conversely,
when a person goes home to direct their own work, they are now
responsible for visiting their clients and interacting with people
around the world on the Internet. Therefore, their face-to-face
interactions are more numerous and their social skills on the
"nets" also have to expand. He supported what Chairman Bunde was
saying and believed that social skills in terms of communication
for children need to increase, both face-to-face and indirectly.
He referenced the Phoenix Program in the Juneau School District as
an example of the "entrepreneurial spirit."
Number 1821
REPRESENTATIVE J. ALLEN KEMPLEN commented he had heard that society
is actually moving back to the "farmer-type" model whereby citizens
are engaged in self-sufficient homesteads - information homesteads.
He explained that it's going back to the roots of America and the
Jeffersonian model which was self-sufficient farmers being
independent citizens. Bringing that around to the information age,
he said the opportunity presents itself to create the same vision
that our Founding Fathers had for a self-sufficient citizenry
engaged in independent and self-reliant craftsmanship or the
"infostead" so to speak. He believed that as a state and as public
representatives, it is important to play a role in establishing the
means of moving information and communication, just as the farmers
found it important to establish the means by which goods and
services could be moved from homestead to homestead.
REPRESENTATIVE KEMPLEN said he is a strong believer in the private
sector providing resources and delivering the needs of people, but
given that Alaska is a sparsely populated state, the volume of
information of traffic may not warrant the private sector investing
in the kind of technology that is needed in order to provide the
roads to the independent "infosteads". He suggested the state of
Alaska look at partnering with another entity to create its own
satellite in order to provide access for all Alaskans through the
information grid, regardless of location. He asked if in Mr.
November's opinion, that was something that merits further
consideration.
Number 1960
MR. NOVEMBER said he was of the opinion that the private sector
wants to make money. He noted that telephone companies and cable
companies are his largest client base and he, as well as the
companies, believe it is in their best interest to provide cable,
fiber and satellite wherever they can as long as they secure their
profit margin. If they can't secure their profit margin, then it's
a questionable call. Regarding the boundary line between the
private sector and the state's responsibility, if an individual
believes that the state is responsible for infrastructure - roads,
communication, etc. - then any state has an obligation to examine
what the private sector is providing for all of its citizenship to
secure equity. In terms of the satellite, Motorola, Microsoft and
British Telecom are all competing to launch low orbiting
satellites. With respect to Alaska owning its own satellite, he
said there are a number of options available and he would be
interested in knowing whether it's cost effective.
MR. NOVEMBER concluded, "I was fascinated by your Jeffersonian
analogy. When Jefferson was there with the Founding Fathers, he
said you have to have three things for democracy: you've got to
have a free press; you've got to have free libraries; and you've
got to teach every citizen how to read and write and do some
arithmetic. I'm convinced that if Jefferson were alive today and
he were founding our country, he would say every citizen has got to
have access to information - the Internet. It's the equivalent of
libraries in the seventeen hundreds."
Number 2079
CHAIRMAN BUNDE thanked Mr. November for providing a new spectrum
for committee members.
ADJOURNMENT
CHAIRMAN BUNDE adjourned the joint meeting of the House/Senate
Health, Education and Social Services Standing Committees at
3:45 p.m.
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