That's 'Edutainment'. by Ken Freed Developing the interactive educational media market may be accelerated with high quality 'edutainment. . Opening before our eyes is a new vision of educational content on the TV and PC screen. In our imaginations, no longer do we lean back on our sofa to absorb learning like a mindless sponge, helplessly hoping for mindfulness. Instead, we see ourselves actively engaging in the learning process. We see ourselves interacting with lessons, learning with each of our five senses and beyond. The media is our portal to worlds we enter in wonder. We can imagine new media showing us whatever we want to learn, whenever we want to learn it. We can picture tossing aside the remote and actually talking to the TV, saying, "Show me the documentary that won all the major awards last year, you know, the one about global warming, the loss of rain forests and sea plankton." The machine understands our speech, references indexes, and moments later the content we want springs to life on a wide-screen, flat-panel display in breathtaking digital color. In our imaginations, we enjoy and value all the benefits of education on-demand. We wish the future was here already because deep down inside, we all are lifelong learners. We just want learning to be easy, personalized. This vision is inviting, yet we must live and work in present time. And today, the reality stays apart from the dream. What blocks fulfillment? Not the technology alone. Apart from voice recognition, still perhaps a decade away from the intelligence described above, all the key technologies needed for interactive educational media are now available or coming on the market. The global infrastructure of interactive digital media is being constructed now. Many years of visionary thinking finally is starting to pay off. Today's long-awaited arrival of interactive TV can help make the case: Cable operators are rebuilding their old systems for two-way digital services of hybrid fiber-coax networks. Cable set-top boxes have high-speed modems for broadband Internet and interactive TV (iTV). . Satellite broadcasters are deploying new set-top IRDs with phoneline return paths. Next will be Ka band transceivers for broadband interactivie TV (given lagtimes). . Wireless operators are building cell clusters in major cities for two-way data and telephony services. When enough plant is built "wireless cable" iTV services are next. . Terrestrial antenna broadcasters are talking about using set-tops to complement the rollout of HDTV services, that means at least a phone line return path for iTV. . Telecom providers are delivering high-speed data over phonelines with DSL modems, and ADSL systems already carries video at VHF quality. What's next? The PC and TV are converging. On the TV screen itself, electronic program guides are tested and ready to help us find and select any kind of content a system operator cares to provide, from junk to quality. Attached to a bundle of fibers, the next generation of digital file servers stands able and ready to handle the traffic volumes for services like video-on-demand. When educational programs aren't free, backend conditional access systems have proven their capacity for managing dynamic pay-per-use billing. A penny for your thoughts. The technologies critical for interactive educational media are ready and waiting. What's missing is not the means but the willingness to use those means. Education does not appear likely to be a tremendous moneymaker at first, based on our past experiences. That's why the network operators are consecrating digital interactivity to delivering entertainment. Yet the masses do want knowledge served with their pabulum. Light "edutainment," sadly, may be the best a network will carry. The TV programmers keep us interested, yes, but why stop there? Be glad the TV teacher is funny, but why play to the lowest common denominator? When WB's Histeria lets their satire get sublime, a thing too rare, a bulb lights above our heads, our eyes sparkle. We learn something useful to our lives. Recall the 1961 speech by Newton Minnow about television becoming a "vast wasteland," a cultural desert where public service is neglected for profits and popularity by an industry held in thrall to the "Dictatorship of Numbers." Will interactive media suffer the same sorry fate? If we build the education market in each generation, the demand for quality educational content will yield a thriving industry. We now live in a frightened world struggling to cope with the "future shock" caused by so much innovation happening so fast. Interactive media may be the most powerful tool for our enlightenment since Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, so we owe it to ourselves and to our children to consider the social effects of what we do now. Will our decisions be guided by visions of hope? Will interactive media fulfill its highest and best potential? Will we stay true to our souls? Our choices today make a difference tomorrow.      (c) 1998-99 by Ken Freed. From a 'TechBytes' column written for Video Age International. .

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Last update: 7 APRIL 2003

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