While I was exploring the educational possibilities of the World Wide Web during those first weeks, my staff and I were also drafting, at the board's direction, a district wide policy that will help protect Ventura Unified students from using the Internet in inappropriate ways. As a district, we have moved cautiously into the world of computer technology. Partly because technology is expensive and has changed so fast, it's been difficult to know which direction to go. Our progress has been uneven. A few schools, such as Junipero Serra, Balboa, Cabrillo, DeAnza and Ventura High, have their own Web sites, thanks to teachers or parents with know-how.
Students receive computer instruction, but time on computers varied depending on equipment.
I have often said that public schools are the last bastions of antiquity. To prepare students for the world they will enter as adults, we educators are supposed to operate a lot closer to the cutting edge than we have been. With the passage of our school bond last spring, we are now committed to the goal of placing one or more networked computers in every classroom. We are also working to give every principal e-mail by this fall and to network individual schools to the district office. But we have moved cautiously, too, because technology is bringing many radical challenges.