Integrating Information Technologies To Facilitate Learning: Redesigning the Teacher Education Curriculum

Human interaction through electronic communication technologies produces new virtual communication environments in which human behaviours appear to become modified, and which result in changes in the way people perceive each other. These 'human factors' include ways in which individuals invent communication 'shorthand' to convey messages, inhibition and disinhibition, group dynamics, and intercultural dynamics. These phenomena span all the application areas of education, administration, research, services, social communication and commerce. They also have considerable implications for the globalisation of communication networks where very different types of cultures need to interface. This paper wi l l explore and illustrate some of the ways in which these human factors are expressed, draw implications for t raining programs and pose some research questions that still need to be addressed. Resume: L'interaction humaine avec les technologies de communication electronique cree de nouveaux environnements dans lesquels les comportements humains semblent se modifier, ils amenent aussi des changements dans la maniere dont les gens se percoivent 1'un 1'autre. Ces facteurs humains incluent les facons que les individus ont d'inventer une communication stenographiee pour transmettre leurs messages, leurs inhibitions et leurs desinhibitions. la dynamique du groupe ainsi que les dynamiques interculturelles. Ces phenomenes se retrouvent dans les domaines d'application comme 1'education, 1'administration, la recherche, les services, la communication sociale et le commerce. Ils ont egalement des implications considerables dans la globalisation des reseaux de communication, oil des cultures tres differentes ont besoin d'une sorte A'interface. Cet article explore et illustre quelques unes des facons dont sont exprimees ces facteurs humains. en tire les implications pour les programmes d'entramement et enfin indique quelques sujets de recherches qui meriteraient d'etre explores. Human Factors and Technology Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by a window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An arm-chair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk, that is all the furniture. And in the arm-chair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh, a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs....