When students leave a tape-based lab, they have reinforced their skill at using a Walkman. When they leave the computer lab, they are computer literate, with all of the practical and logical processing skills that that implies. The traditional classroom is modeled after a hierarchical structure that remains fundamentally teacher centered no matter how it has been renamed. The fact of having a computer for each student, with the students in control, forces the teacher from the role of conductor, one that he would not otherwise relinquish. His role truly becomes one of facilitator and more reflective of the modern organizational model emphasizing teamwork more than walls and sharply delineated roles.
Teamwork relies on communication, and communication is our goal as language teachers.
The first inclination of users in a CALL lab is to replicate functions and activities performed in the old lab, the tape-based lab. This is an unavoidable mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. The new cannot and should not be modified to emulate the old any more than your safer, faster, more comfortable new car should be degraded to look and drive like your old car. Teachers must grapple with the fact that the old lab is dead and do so quickly. As CALL labs are more capable they are also more complex.