Go to the Judi Harris list of projects. Just as collaborating and communicating across a global network enhances learning for students, teachers will find that the Internet provides a chance to step outside of the isolation which too long characterized the life of teachers in smokestack schools, communicating with colleagues across town, across state lines and across national boundaries on how to achieve the best results for students. Teachers may select a listserv from this list of educational listservs which will engage them in an electronic community of educators exchanging ideas, questions, good strategies, fears, doubts, etc. The Internet presents schools and teachers with a challenge and a rich array of opportunities. We have explored two aspects of the challenge . . .
Great opportunities emerge from a richer environment and enhanced communications.
Learning becomes a real time exploration of real world issues. If schools fail to address this challenge, the families and the consumer marketplace will do it for us with all of the predictable emphasis upon entertainment, advertising and pop culture which we have come to expect from that segment of the society. The consequences of inaction are unhealthy for a democratic society which can ill afford to turn over the education of its young to commercially driven enterprises. Inaction breeds inequality and threatens us with a future cloaked in virtual truth. In the days before the printing press, he explains, a few people had just a few books.