If knowledge is stored in data bases, than we must teach our kids how to intelligently search for it. Enabling our pupils to know how to access data is not a vision of improved education, it is the very definition of the rudiments of education, of literacy. The changes in the technology of stationery do not imply a change in our basic duty - the empowerment of our pupils with proper methods of wholesome access to knowledge. The digital stationery systems and tools are the software applications that enable the personal user of such applications to write, to edit and to read, in the broadest meaning of these terms, using computerized systems of data manipulation of various formats and structures. The word processors provide options for writing, editing and reading patterns of strings of characters organized in frames and pages.
Presentation programs provide similar options related to patterns of sequences of transparencies.
Hypertext generators are word processors enriched with hyper-links. The electronic spreadsheets are related to patterns of numerical calculations. And so forth. If any of these applications, or their output, are connected to common and significant sources of information, then we must learn how to use them, and we must let our pupils learn how to use them. Defining the role of the teacher in the new learning environments as the provider of access to sources of data is limiting our concept of learning to the output aspect of the data manipulating systems available in such environments.