This presentation is a call for action as well as interaction. For online teaching to be professionalized, practitioners must be duly rewarded, and the vast amount of voluntaristic research necessary to reconstitute Academia in cyberspace must be recognized by academic institutions.
Japan gives early evidence of how similar technology is appropriated in a different culture.
Original sources are translated, including government plans to connect all schools to the Internet by the year 2000. New explanations for Japan's enigmatic history are proffered. Finally, online projects of pioneer Japanese teachers at all educational levels are touched upon, since they will be among the key links to Japan as online education goes global. Purposes Section 1. WAOE is constituted as a professional association dedicated to advancing the development, implementation, evaluation and administration of online education, its technical and institutional support for practitioners, its dissemination as a discipline, its related technologies, needed skills and perspectives.