Older teachers have to make a conscious choice to acquaint themselves with computing skills. Teachers can use computers to move students from memorization skills to analytical skills. That is the classroom challenge and opportunity. Today, access to computers often begins in the home. It is therefore becoming a social equity issue, because some families have computers and some don't, and this is often determined by the level of household income.
Welsh notes that many universities require students to have computers.
He observes that graduate programs in quantitative sciences and methodologies demand it as a matter of course. And in high schools, particularly well-financed ones, the ratio of computers to students is rising. The spread of computer fluency and the cheapness of computer networks have created distance learnings, one of the most significant changes in learning wrought by the computer. Given a modest level of computer literacy, students in even very remote places can work along with others in an urban classroom or in the next hamlet in the tundra. Networked learning is the basis of a system of instruction pioneered by professor Derrick de Kerckhove, director of the McLuhan program in culture and technology at the University of Toronto.