These agencies intimately linked to schools and school improvement might bring local educational agencies into the network thus providing the all-one systems concept that has been so elusive. I think not. We can't do it. Cost, time, distance, management skills, and a host of other factors would have stood in the way. Today, more than at any time in history, we have a reasonable chance of making a system such as this work due to rapid advancements in information technology.
Technology is, of course, no panacea to all of the problems in teacher education.
But information technology does allow us to bridge the gaps in time and space that have so limited us in the past. Now interactive technologies made possible by the installation of fiber optics systems allow information to flow both ways. Not only can universities now reach out to an expanded set of networks, those networks can, on a cost effective basis, reach into the university. The flow of knowledge, expertise, and talent can go both ways. This two way exchange made possible through the interactive technology serves as a form of glue to hold pieces of the system together and will do so even more in the future in ways that we can now only dimly anticipate.