Reflections and observations: education and technology

van Dam began teaching computer graphics just as the field was beginning, in the early 1960s. His first class was not of graduate students or post-docs, but was a group of forward thinking high school teachers and their best students. It was this experience that inspired van Dam to pursue a career in academia. For the past 30 years he has taught at Brown University where he co-founded the department of computer science and for 10 years served as its first chairman. The past five years have seen exceptionally strong demand for integration of computers into K-12 curricula driven both by the media hype surrounding computer technology and networks and the increasing pressure on educational institutions to improve scope and quality of education in a publicly demonstrable fashion. These forces have combined to produce a time of great potential for education but also one of great danger. Educators and administrators must consider how can this technology be used to promote rigorous and useful learning rather merely adding glitz to traditional types of assignments. Educators and administrators must also be aware that although computers can bring education to a more diverse and expanding audience, the same technology can serve to divide societies into groups of haves and have nots. van Dam analyzes several means of approaching these and other issues, drawing on current research findings and using real life examples from his experience as a researcher educator, and Director of the Graphics and Visualization Center.