A One Thousand Dollar Web Challenge!!!: Short Papers on the Use of Technology in Education
by M. Thirunarayanan
Category: Computers

The World Wide Web enables us to do many things faster and easier--but has it really changed what we as human beings can accomplish in our lives? An intriguing collection of essays, "A One Thousand Dollar Web Challenge!!! Short Papers on the Use of Technology in Education" explores the impact and uses of the Web, particularly in educational settings. In a section entitled, "The Impending McMorphosis of the Global Professor," author M. O. Thirunarayanan describes a future in which learners will visit "drive-through universities" for both educational enhancement and an order of French fries. The author argues that technology-based distance education is allowing students to obtain degrees in short periods of time with little effort in "Technology and Degree Inflation." "From Clickers to Thinkers..." compares our manic clicking behavior on the Web to the pecking behavior that Skinner reinforced experimentally among his laboratory pigeons. Finally, "A One Thousand Dollar Web Challenge!!!" offers a $1,000 prize to the first reader who finds one thing that the World Wide Web has enabled them to do that they couldn't have done at all before the Web was developed.