This pressure is exacerbated when the goal of raising standards of student achievement translates into raising students' scores on the state-mandated TAAS test. There are other time barriers as well. The Museum requires that participating schools store their digital artifacts on their own district or campus Web servers. But understandable security concerns mean that students are rarely if ever allowed to upload materials directly to these servers, thus imposing an additional burden on teachers, who must now perform this task but lack the necessary skills or the certification that some districts require. Infrequent Professional Contact.
Researchers know that it is essential to feel that one is part of a scholarly community.
Great research universities depend upon and promote the formation of such communities within and across many disciplines. They devote substantial resources to sustain participation in these communities, not just locally but nationally and internationally as well. The Internet has emerged as a vitally important force in this regard, enabling scholars to collaborate across great distances on projects that would be inconceivable without such technological support. Community has an important impact on teaching as well. The success of the UT Austin Computer Writing and Research Lab has been due in large part to the emergence of a genuine community of practice which has persisted for more than a decade.