Live read

Press, 22 August 1989, Page 31

Live read

The concept of the “active book” was discussed by the conference’s keynote speaker, Dr Brian Oakley, president of the British Computer Society. Dr Oakley, who is chairman of Logica Cambridge, Ltd, the largest independent information-technology company in Britain, addressed the conference on artificial intelligence developments in Europe. It was technically and economically feasible for a person to carry everywhere for himself or herself an “active book.” This would have a “page” in the form probably of a liquid-crystal (LCD) display. “With simple touch keys, or perhaps speech commands, one instructs the empty book to read down the material one wants, just as one can do to a computer terminal now. The main difference lies in its size and its portability so that it can be used from one’s armchair, or one’s train as much as one’s desk. “The first step in the communication system will be a radio link, no doubt on a digital cellular radio system. There are now over one million cellular radios in use in the United Kingdom.” At present a device called the CTS or "credit phone” system coming on the market in Britain provided a true pocket communicator at the cost of a few pounds. “Within a few years literally everybody will have one, and one’s ‘Active Book’ will contain such a link. One will use this book to call down what one wants to read: textbooks, office papers, facsimile material, stock exchange prices — ail forms of computer readable material,” Dr Oakley said. Britain, and much of the rest of Europe, faced a severe shortage of teachers, particularly for technological subjects. This was partly because of demographic trends, which meant a fall of up to 30 per cent in the number of 18-year-olds coming on the job market from the peak in 1983 to the trough in 1995. “The situation is even worse in Germany, and much the same elsewhere in the most industrialised countries of Europe.” Computer-based instruction had been under development for many years without very marked impact, Dr Oakley said. It worked for fully motivated students, but there was little evidence it could be used more widely. But coming were “intelligent interfaces” in which a computer built a picture of the special needs of a particular student — "and even his particular performance at one particular time and lesson.” This information would be used to tailor the work programme to the individual student’s needs. “Not enough evidence has accumulated to say how widely the technique can be used. But is it very fanciful to imagine that, within a decade, every teacher will employ studentadapted computer-based training as a way of overcoming the teacher-shortage problems?” The development of new media, such as CD-ROM (which can carry the equivalent of a set of encyclopedias on a portion of one disk), could much enrich teaching material made available to the student, Dr Oakley said. He expressed concern about the decreased human contact between teacher and pupil as the teacher would spend more time preparing material to go into the computer system. He suggested that it was only a matter of time before virtually all text books would be provided in expert-system format.