The development of science and technology is the main factor to promote the development of educational means, and every leap of educational means is inseparable from the progress of science and technology. With the development of science and technology, the educational means of human beings are constantly improving. On the other hand, the improvement of educational means has further promoted the development of education and indirectly promoted the progress and leap of science and technology. As an important material foundation of education, every development of educational means provides a broader platform for the development of education. At present, there are serious bottlenecks in education in China, especially in higher education. The low level of national education is extremely unfavorable to the all-round development of economy, science and technology and society. Therefore, it is urgent to improve the level of national education, and we must find educational means suitable for the present situation in China.
In the 2 1 century education revitalization plan, the national government clearly put forward the goal of popularizing higher education. However, under the conditions of modern society, a single traditional education can no longer meet the growing demand for education in the construction of material civilization and spiritual civilization. The reason why modern society should implement universal education is because the development of modern economy and society cannot be separated from universal education. Modern economy is based on high technology, and science and technology have become the first driving force to promote economic and social development. In this case, the social and economic development requires more and more people's quality. At present, governments and people all over the world have reached the following consensus: without high-level talents, there will be no high-level science and technology, and there will be no high-level economic and social development without high-level science and technology. Therefore, in the fierce international competition, a strong and popular education system must be established. This is not only the requirement of human development under the conditions of modern society, but also an indispensable basic element of modern society. China has a vast territory and the distribution of educational resources is extremely uneven, which makes the proportion of educated population and education level far lower than the average level of developing countries. Modern distance education, that is, network education, can break the geographical and time constraints and has the advantage of interactivity, which makes it possible to change the backward education situation in China, realize the popularization of education, especially higher education, and build a lifelong education system.
First, online education-the inevitable result of the development of science and technology
With the increase and expansion of human information activities, relying solely on language and gestures can no longer meet the needs of daily information transmission. In labor, people have gradually created written symbols, externalized human language, revolutionized the way of information transmission and storage, surpassed human physiological limitations and time and space limitations for the first time, and truly provided material support for human education. The original words were carved on stones, metals, Oracle bones, bamboo slips or wood. Later, Cai Lun invented paper in the Eastern Han Dynasty, which made the dissemination of information more convenient. Although the educated were limited to princes and priests at that time, human education had a brand-new beginning after all. By165438+1940s, movable type printing was invented by Bi Sheng in Song Dynasty. Compared with traditional handwriting and block printing, movable type printing greatly improves the efficiency and speed of information dissemination, enabling human beings to copy information in large quantities and at high speed for the first time, and has made great contributions to the popularization of education. After the Renaissance, especially after the industrial revolution in the18th century, the invention of the steam engine and its application in publishing and printing rapidly increased and expanded the quantity, quality, speed and scope of human information dissemination. Since this period, in order to meet the needs of industrialization for all kinds of talents, capitalist countries have vigorously set up schools, and human education has ushered in a new era.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, a series of analog electronic communication modes, such as movies, television, recording and video recording technologies, were produced, applied and popularized one after another, which made the communication space of human information cover the whole society with high speed, wide range, rich content and convenient copying and storage. Mankind has entered the stage of mass communication represented by analog electronic communication as never before. The characteristics of communication in this period are electromagnetic media as the carrier and audio-visual communication as the main body. These modes of communication have influenced the reform of educational means, expanded the extension of educational means and changed the form of educational means. People can acquire knowledge through audio-visual materials or TV and radio teaching, which actually provides a learning opportunity for those who are rejected by universities. At the same time, it also provides an opportunity for those who want to further improve their own quality or learn a skill, and begins to initially change the traditional concept that education can only be carried out on campus, so as to make the education target more extensive.
From 1980s to 1990s, mankind entered a brand-new era in the history of human communication, namely the era of digital and network communication. It combines all the advantages of printed media and analog electronic media, and overcomes their shortcomings, so that words, sounds, images, animations and other ways are greatly integrated by computer technology. The first-generation carriers such as books, newspapers and magazines and the second-generation carriers such as broadcasting, movies, television, videos and tapes are digitized in the network, and the boundaries between them are completely broken, making the differences between them blurred and unrecognizable. Another difference between digital technology and all previous media is that due to the interactive nature of the network, it has turned one-way communication that has lasted for thousands of years into two-way communication, realized the interaction between the communicator and the receiver, and made the status of the communicator and the receiver relative. Network communication has brought about qualitative changes in people's mode of production, lifestyle, way of thinking and behavior. Its influence on education is unprecedented. With the emergence of a large number of online schools, distance teaching has become a fashion. As a new teaching method on the Internet, distance teaching and virtual classroom have broken through the geographical restrictions, so that every networked student can hear the lectures of excellent teachers, which not only solves the problem of insufficient teachers, but also makes students feel immersive. It can be seen that online education has greatly broadened the scope and ways for people to receive education and is a milestone in human education.
Second, online education has opened a door for the popularization of education.
From 1969, when the Forward-looking Research and Planning Bureau of the U.S. Department of Defense built the world's first computer network to 1994, when China joined the Internet, the Internet developed rapidly all over the world, which greatly accelerated the process of marketization and globalization and changed people's way of life, work and thinking. At the same time, the more developed the society, the higher the requirement for people's knowledge level. Modern Japanese say: "tomorrow's development depends on knowledge and information"; Americans say, "American achievements depend on American learning." In the future society, learning will take up more people's time.
Computer network shows people a brand-new way of education. It is for more people, including the elderly, adults, children, those who have jobs and those who have no jobs, those who study in schools and those who have no chance to study in schools, to study in online schools. People can receive education online at any time, or choose their favorite teachers to study. As long as they are online, they can study and receive education at home. Education has no space restrictions. Today's universities may not be able to accommodate too many students because of the limitations of classrooms, experimental equipment and student dormitories, but through the network, a large number of students can be absorbed for distance education, thus satisfying more students' desire to go to college and improving the quality of education. It should be said that online education has opened up a broader way to meet the multi-level and multi-form educational needs. Using the network for distance education has the following advantages:
1. The layout structure of higher education can be changed. At present, China's higher education is basically concentrated in some large and medium-sized cities and relatively developed areas. This excessive concentration directly affects people's opportunities to receive higher education in remote areas and vast rural areas. In order to change this situation, 1998, the Ministry of Education approved the first batch of four key universities to carry out remote network education pilot, which has now been expanded to 68 universities, and decided that the Central Radio and TV University will organize and implement the "pilot reform of talent training mode and open education". This move will effectively change the current layout structure of higher education.
2. Conducive to the sharing of quality education resources. As an information resource, educational resources are used infinitely on the Internet. Some key institutions of higher learning have accumulated rich educational and teaching resources in years of education and teaching, which can be provided to the educated through the network, so that educational resources can be widely shared.
3. It is conducive to expanding the scale of education at low cost. Compared with developed countries, China has a huge education market and high demand, but the scale of education. In particular, the scale of higher education is still at a low stage. It is not enough to increase the enrollment rate of higher education of the same age from 9% to 65,438+05% by 2065,438+00 only by relying on the existing scale of higher education. As a low-cost, high-quality and high-efficiency education mode, modern distance education can expand the coverage of higher education. It can be said that only by developing modern distance education rapidly can we expand the scale of education at low cost and realize the popularization of higher education.
4. It is conducive to narrowing the educational gap between regions. The biggest feature of online education is that it can be taught in different places or at the same time in different places. For areas with relatively backward education, as long as they invest less in network construction costs, they can receive different types of network education (academic education and non-academic education) according to their own needs. This is of great significance to improve the local education level.
5. It is beneficial to cultivate compound talents. Network education can meet the needs of people who have obtained university or postgraduate education to study for a second degree or carry out non-academic continuing education. They receive online education mainly in life and work, in order to further improve their various qualities and further improve themselves. At present, the online education in many open universities abroad is mainly aimed at postgraduate education and undergraduate continuing education. It has unique advantages in cultivating high-quality compound talents.
6. It is conducive to promoting the coordinated and healthy development of universities, primary and secondary schools in China. In primary and secondary schools, quality education has been put forward for many years, but there is a sharp contradiction between China's huge population and severe employment pressure, which makes quality education more verbal. However, the inefficient and low-quality higher education, characterized by rigid specialty setting and hanging education that stifles personality, can no longer meet the requirements of talent training in the era of knowledge economy, and there is an urgent need for efficient, high-quality and flexible network distance education. Network education can fundamentally change this situation. Through network education, the popularization of higher education is realized, and the quality education in primary and secondary schools is truly implemented. The flexible specialty setting and the use of various media in online education will greatly make up for the deficiency of current higher education.
Third, China must accelerate the development of online education.
As a new way of education, the bright future of online education is regarded as a huge and attractive cake by many people, so the initial online education in China is in a state of disorder. Some people say that online education in China is in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. At present, there are more than 3,000 educational websites in China, all of which are independent, without their own characteristics, and cannot form their own advantages in online education. Even the online education organized by some universities (now there are 68) is out of the primary stage. Swedish Network University was established in March 2002, and was jointly established by 390 universities. The courses offered by online universities are provided by colleges and universities, and the principle of applying for membership by each school is implemented. Institutions applying for membership must provide online courses or education and training for online universities, and be responsible for the construction of software and hardware facilities in their respective schools. They can also get special funds from the government to set up a board of directors composed of two students and principals who have joined the university to supervise the operation of the online university. Online education in the Open University of Britain is also very successful. Therefore, online education in China needs to be standardized, and the existing resources should be fully utilized for necessary integration, merger and expansion. For example, the cooperation between Lenovo and New Oriental and the affiliated middle school of Peking University, and the merger of Netbig and 10 1 are all good examples. We should focus on cultivating corresponding network talents, establish a scientific network education system, and constantly explore, summarize, summarize and generalize the network education theory in practice, so as to continuously improve China's network education.
In order to make China's informatization construction keep up with the world trend, China is vigorously building the information superhighway. The so-called information superhighway refers to the establishment of a huge interactive multimedia high-speed computer communication network system across the country, that is, the integration of scattered telephone, computer, television, broadcasting, fax, database and other systems into one, forming a large-capacity, high-speed electronic data transmission system based on modern computer network communication technology, with optical fiber communication and satellite communication as the backbone and various databases, information bases and knowledge bases as information sources, spanning the whole country and even the whole world. It has changed the traditional way of production, life and communication. Through the continuous extension of the information superhighway, not only people in cities, but also people in remote areas and vast rural areas can make full use of online education to study in virtual schools. At present, online education in China is in its infancy, and there is a big gap between China and developed countries in terms of hardware and software. We must realize that educational innovation depends not only on traditional educational means, but also on modern technical educational means. Promote the modernization of education by informationization and realize the leap-forward development of education. As a kind of network education, it is very suitable for the development needs of education in China and has great development potential in China. The low average education level in China directly affects economic and social development; Moreover, the education in the vast inland areas is relatively backward, which has also seriously hindered the current western development. Therefore, the state should speed up the construction of network infrastructure, increase investment in network distance education, constantly improve the current network education, and make network distance education extend to every corner of our country.
The development of education depends on science and technology, and the development of science and technology depends on education. Modern network distance education will provide more people with opportunities to receive education, and will also become the first choice for people's lifelong learning. Its development will greatly promote the popularization of education, improve the education level of the whole nation, and provide a strong impetus for the development of science and technology and the prosperity of the country.