Fraser's classroom without walls on the web might suggest for some the displacement of the traditional classroom by online courses, but I like to think of it as suggesting a seamless interface between the classroom and the web, each adding educational value to the other. Teachers today often find themselves at the receiving end of a seemingly endless stream of internet hype on the one hand, and of long lists of URLs on the other, which they lack the time to explore and sometimes the knowledge to use. The rest of this paper represents an attempt to begin to make some sense out of this. Every file on the internet is a part of a vast and unprecedented archive. Even the most self-absorbed, crass, or offensive websites are part of this archive, of at least potential research interest.
Print media predominate on the internet, but much less so than a few years ago.
The internet's archive of audio materials is increasing very rapidly. These are sometimes embedded within texts or attached to webpages, but most stand alone as audio files on web servers. Video will be the next big growth area in the internet archive as bandwidth increases. Like audio files, some can be downloaded and others just streamed. Easy availability of video and audio files will enormously enhance the pedagogical potential of course websites and of internet access in the classroom.