Here we are, smack-dab in the future -- yet the digital revolution has hardly even begun. Incredible technical progress has been made since the invention of digital computers, but we've got a long way to go before these devices become the transparent tools for teaching and learning that we want them to be. So as we contemplate the string of three zeros on the odometer of time, it stirs in this magazine a yearning to reflect on where we're going next. Figuring that the bright minds that put technology in the service of education would be capable of creative leaps into the future, Electronic School asked nearly 100 leaders in the field to tell us how digital technologies will change the nature of teaching and learning in the new millennium. The result was an outpouring of informed and insightful predictions about the classroom of tomorrow -- many more than we could publish in our print magazine. Happy New Year, and may your own crystal ball guide your personal journey of technological discovery. 

Roger C. Schank 
The future of education is online. The old idea that the local expert on physics (the physics teacher) should teach physics is exactly that -- an old idea. The best and the brightest can now teach physics to everybody. The old idea that teaching means standing up and talking while students take notes is another antiquated idea. All courses at all levels, from elementary school through college, can and will be converted into "learn by doing" courses that take true advantage of the simulation capacity of computers to provide lifelike "doing" scenarios mentored by the world's experts. 

Naturally, this will cause a big change in what goes on in the schools. We won't want children staying home, taking courses on computers, and never having real, live contact with other people. They need to learn how to communicate with each other, how to deal with real people problems, and how to grow as people. So, while the more academic subjects are learned online, we'll need teachers to help guide students in the more human areas. The introduction and acceptance of the new online courses will not come overnight. In five years, students may only be taking a few of their courses online, but within 20 years the change will be dramatic. Nearly all of today's academic subjects will be taught in this way because such courses will be more interesting, more engaging, more individualized, and more diverse. 

Teachers will no longer be content providers. Rather, they will be discussion leaders, advisors, tutors, field trip leaders -- always helping their students build interpersonal skills while they pursue their academic subjects. Schools will become more like summer camps, teaching kids what they need to know about functioning in society, dealing with issues like teamwork, handling stress, getting people to like you, and other subjects critical to adolescents. School will be fun and interesting. 

Roger C. Schank is director of the Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University and a leader in the field of artificial intelligence and multimedia-based interactive training. He is also chairman and chief technology officer of Cognitive Arts Corp. 

Amy Bruckman 
Sometimes when I tell my mother about my research, she laughs. The "new" educational ideas I'm exploring sound a whole lot like the ones behind the progressive elementary school she attended 50 years ago. Her school was affiliated with Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the teachers and visiting researchers were inspired by theorists like Piaget, Vygotsky, and especially Dewey. Half a century later, we are still struggling to put those ideas into practice. 

Fifty years from now -- maybe even much sooner -- I predict we will have made substantially more progress. The reason is the power of computer networks. I don't believe that technology has any magical, transformative properties, and I don't give credence to most of the hype about the power of computers in education. However, I do believe that the problems we are wrestling with in making Dewey's ideas a reality are fundamentally problems of human communication. Teachers need to be less isolated; they need to have easy opportunities to share ideas with their peers. Students need to exchange ideas not just with teachers but also with peers, including children of different ages. Adults, especially senior citizens, can and should play a greater role in the education system by sharing their knowledge and experience and functioning as role models. 

Computer networks can make these kinds of communication not just possible but easy. Communication via computer networks has the potential to make progressive approaches to education more practical and scalable in real, nonlaboratory settings. 

Amy Bruckman is an assistant professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She and her students in the Electronic Learning Communities research group do research on online communities and education. 

John Sculley 
The Internet has changed everything, yet we are still in the early stages of what it will become. Every major technology that shapes society goes through three stages: first, a curiosity phase; then a useful technology period; and finally it becomes an indispensable utility service. People in school today can expect to live in a world where the Internet will become an indispensable part of their lives. 

Schools should think of their students as customers who will be in as much control of how they learn as e-commerce customers are in control of what they buy. The issue shouldn't be just when will classrooms get wired to the Internet, but will these student customers do most of the learning over the Internet from the institution of the traditional school or will they access interactive learning sessions from home, from a library, or on a field trip. 

It is inevitable that the role of teachers will change as Internet-based curriculum becomes more important. But there is an opportunity for teachers to have an even more important role in the lives of their students if they are willing to accept the inevitability of the Internet as the underpinning of the new economy and appreciate that students as customers will have great power to determine how they will learn. 

John Sculley is a partner in the Sculley Brothers venture capital firm and chairman and co-founder of Sirius Thinking Ltd., a children's entertainment company. He was CEO of Apple Computer from 1983 until 1993. 

Elliot Soloway and Cathleen Norris 
Technology needs to get a whole lot more friendly, stable, and effective before the typical K-12 teacher can use it on a daily, routine basis. The early adopters, those 10 percent of teachers who have nerves of steel (to deal with the constant rebooting beeps and bongs) and thick skins (to deal with cries of "it's not working, Ms. Marx"), are the only ones really doing daily battle with current personal computers, networks, and educational software. While we might call for the integration of technology into curriculum, it's not going to happen until the technology becomes at least one to two orders of magnitude better -- in all the senses of that word. 

First off, forget the personal computer -- Windows or Mac -- for schools. As our colleague Barry Fishman observes, "Personal computers in K-12 are an oxymoron." After being pounded on eight periods a day, five days a week, they devolve into misconfigured piles of rubble. The only way to go for schools is "thin clients" -- time-sharing. A child needs only a monitor and keyboard; centralize the maintenance and there is a much better chance of having a running set of computers. 

Second, schools need to invest in well-trained networking personnel. Commercial concerns don't understand the problems that K-12 has with its networks since the companies just hire more techies to keep things running. K-12 hasn't and oftentimes can't. But, for the next five years, we don't see the myriad complexities involved in networking technologies becoming any less of a black art. If we expect teachers to use the network for curriculum, then it has to be reliable; without highly expert folks babysitting networks, they will not stay up with the regularity needed by teachers and students. 

Third, it's time to move beyond HyperStudio as the main educational software tool for K-12. We need a plethora of learner-centered software tools to support all ages and all elements of the curriculum. The key to having such software? Schools need to understand that they must pay for software just as they pay for textbooks; software doesn't come for free with the textbook. Until there is real money in educational software, until schools allocate sincere dollars for software, we will be stuck with HyperStudio. 

Computational technologies have reached past the early adopters to the masses in essentially all professions except for K-12. If the impasse isn't broken, here is what will happen: Children will become comfortable and proficient with technology at home. But that will just exacerbate the digital divide even further! Over the next five years, we need to redouble our efforts at truly bringing K-12 education into the digital age. 

Elliot Soloway, a professor at the University of Michigan's College of Engineering, School of Education, and School of Information, is currently working in the Detroit Public Schools through the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools. Cathleen Norris, a professor in the Department of Technology and Cognition at the University of North Texas, is also president of the National Educational Computing Association, which organizes the NECC conference. 

Saul Rockman 
Whenever I get depressed about the quality of the educational experience or the use of technology in schools, I think about the kids. Not the teachers, who are often well-meaning but unprepared to use technology effectively, and not the dilapidated buildings that suffer from decades of deferred maintenance and are more likely to have a leaky roof than a LAN. But I think of the students who, if given permission, could master and apply technology in amazing ways. When offered appropriate challenges and given powerful technology tools, our students can do marvelous things. But how do we get educators to give themselves permission to get out of their way? 

We ask that all teachers master technology and apply it in the classroom. Sure, all professionals should learn enough about computers and other technology to get their work done. But they don't need to learn more than that. I don't particularly want the people managing my retirement account to become experts in Photoshop; the guy who fixes my car doesn't need to master HTML. If teachers don't need these tools to get the best from their students, why do we insist they learn them? I'd rather teachers learn to say yes when students want to try out a new tool and share what they learn with their peers. Too often we hear, "No, you can't use that because I don't know how to use it, yet." So what! Give permission. Let 'em go. 

We need to free children of the constraints that teachers sometimes impose when they don't know the answer. We need to give students permission to try -- and occasionally to fail -- rather than preventing them from gaining access to skills and ideas and information that will help them decide what work they want to do and how they want to do it. We have the tools; we use the ones that help us get our work done efficiently and enjoyably. Let's give the children the same options and the same responsibility to choose what works for them. 

Saul Rockman is president of Rockman Et Al, an independent research and consulting firm specializing in technology and learning. 

Dale Mann 
Taboo prediction 1: Technology may teach better than a real live human being. The point of technology is that it extends human capability. So why begin by assuming that we will always be better than it? The fact of the matter is, in schooling we have not yet cared enough, or been courageous enough, to organize head-to-head outcome comparisons of carbon-based versus silicon-based teaching and learning. Will quality learning always require a teacher? Gee, I hope not. I don't want to cripple the help that those of us who teach can expect from a partnership with technology. And I certainly don't want to keep children shackled to a teacher-centric past. 

Taboo prediction 2: Technology can be integrated into instruction without staff development. Most teachers freely acknowledge that training is virtually useless, but they happily endorse district, state, and even federal plans that worship at the professional development shrine. Why? Do you do most of your banking with a real live human being or with an ATM? In order to use the ATM, did you spend a weekend gazing at someone else's overheads? Why do we assume that the only way to integrate technology into classroom teaching is to pay someone to show teachers how to do it and then to pay teachers to be physically present at the show? Curiosity, a need for productivity, and professional pride go a long way and might in schools, too, if we would stop infantilizing teachers. 

Taboo prediction 3: Capital can be substituted for labor in schooling. I don't want fewer teachers in classrooms; I want teachers freed to concentrate on the things that are best done by humans. Capital got substituted for labor when women stopped beating dirty clothes on river rocks and plugged in a washing machine. We applauded that, but most school people are appalled at the same prospect in classrooms. You don't have to stuff a wooden shoe in the expansion slot to understand that children need adults. The technology should do what the teachers should not -- attendance, grade reporting, drill and practice, testing and some diagnostic and prescriptive cycles, even some sorts of presentation. Those functions can all be done as well or better by technology, freeing teachers to do what they say they like: face-to-face and one-on-one with children. 

Dale Mann is a professor in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Columbia University's Teachers College in New York City. He is also managing director of Interactive Inc. in Huntington, N.Y. 

William L. Rukeyser 
When parents, former students, and policy makers look back on the turn of the millennium from the vantage point of 2025 or 2030, they are likely to see the '90s as a period of naivete and gullibility as well as intense change and remarkable opportunities in K-12 education. 

Historians of American education, such as Stanford's Larry Cuban, have charted the pendulum swing from outlandish ed tech promises through disappointing results to finger pointing followed by mass amnesia. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did not start that particular pendulum swinging; it dates back at least as far as Thomas Edison and the silent movies. 

I predict that the massive infusion of education technology of the '90s will lead to big disappointments in the next few years. Once the novelty has worn off, the ability to bring large amounts of information from far away might not seem so marvelous. Instead we might focus on the truly daunting task of teaching students how to make sense of information -- a process that occurs inside the head, not on a screen. And we might, thankfully, do away with secretaries of education telling gullible audiences that, "the great thing about the web is that it has all the information of the world's great libraries." 

My hope is that in the new millennium, technology training will evolve from showing teachers how to use hardware and software in their classes, into empowering teachers to make professional decisions about what tools are best for any given educational challenge -- and that it will give them the confidence to ignore those products that are stylish but not truly useful. 

William L. Rukeyser is coordinator of Learning in the Real World, a nonprofit information clearinghouse in Woodland, Calif., with a focus on education technology in K-12 schools and the effects of computer use in cognitive development in ages birth through 11 years. 

Don Tapscott 
I don't agree with the criticism made by some parents and elected officials that there is too much emphasis in our schools today on using computers rather than teaching the basics. Computers vs. basics is not an either/or proposition. Computers are the basics. Students don't study basics instead of computing; students study basics using computing technology. 

As they should. Having teachers drill students in multiplication tables or verb conjugations is a squandering of their knowledge and talents. Off-loading repetitive or mundane tasks to computers helps get maximum value from increasingly scarce teaching dollars. Rather than the teacher trying to drill 20 students with different skill levels simultaneously, computers can work with all students at their own pace and determine areas that need further study. The interactive software tailors the learning experience by evaluating the child's abilities, learning style, and social context. 

But this is just the first step in the proper use of computers. With the arrival of the Internet, the computer has also become the student's most powerful ally in an unprecedented voyage of discovery and learning, with the teacher playing the critical role of copilot. 

For centuries education was built around the broadcast model of learning, with the teacher transmitting information to kids, who are supposed to absorb it and regurgitate it on demand. The assumption is that through repetition, rehearsal, and practice, facts and information can be molded into knowledge. 

But with the new Internet-enabled media, the center of the learning experience is fundamentally transformed, shifting from the teacher to the student. And the learning process in the classroom is much more active, with students discussing, debating, researching, and collaborating on projects. 

In the digital economy, such skills are essential elements in a student's modern toolkit of "basics" -- just as necessary as reading and writing. The economy and society these kids are growing into is very different than that of their parents and grandparents. Their destination is different, and so is the route they must take. 

Don Tapscott is chairman of the Alliance for Converging Technologies, a Toronto-based think tank that is investigating how the Internet and new media are transforming business, government, and society. He is also the president of New Paradigm Learning Corporation. His latest book is Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. 

Tod Machover 
Music is one of the activities that can engage the complete child, from intellect to emotions, from body to soul, literally from head to toe. In fact, children are capable of enormously creative activity in music -- exploring the natural world and discovering the music in sound, thus reinventing music from first principles. Yet such activities are seldom offered in our culture. I think it's time to bring creative musical expression back into a child's development, starting at the earliest ages. Interestingly, new technological developments may make it possible to bring music to everyone. 

Children should start by creating music, rather than by recreating it; in other words, they should be experimenters and composers before they are performers. Some of this can be done -- as I was luckily led to do by my mom when I was a kid -- by making music out of ordinary objects around the house. But new instruments -- new toys -- are needed to let the child touch and squeeze music, getting at the expressive core of sound without physical or technical boundaries. 

One of our major research endeavors at the MIT Media Lab is to find tactile, playful, visceral, stimulating ways for children to experiment with music. We have been working on three categories of such "Music Toys": Music Shapers, which allow the child to create music by manipulating a soft, touchable interface, made out of fabric, foam, or even Play-Doh; Simple Things, which can be held in one hand and have simple videogame-like controls for storing and manipulating simple sounds, melodies, and rhythms, but which interconnect wirelessly with other such devices, allowing complex music to emerge from a group of five, 10, or even 100 kids playing together; and a Big Thing, which is like a Lego construction set designed for music, which enables children to compose their own pieces by building a large-scale sculpture, which in turn can be performed. 

We are developing a pedagogy for these new Music Toys that will allow children to be mentored by teachers and by expert musicians. We are developing a project called Toy Symphony, which will bring children, symphony orchestras, and famous soloists together to create and perform music using traditional instruments and Music Toys. 

It is essential that we recognize the powerful role that music can have in a child's growing up and accept the responsibility of completely reimagining the ways of developing a lifelong love of music, along with a new set of tools, instruments, and experiences that allow each of us to get to the heart of musical creativity with the smallest number of detours. 

Tod Machover is a composer and professor of Music & Media and director of the Hyperinstruments Group at the MIT Media Lab. 

Bob Hughes 
Fasten your seat belt; the new millennium is showing signs of a wild ride. I wish we weren't going to leave people behind, but that's turning out not to be the case. There are people who will make the trip and those who won't. A troubling question is, "Will our schools be ready to travel with us?" 

Schools are a snapshot of today's attitude toward the future. New invention has occurred faster than we can assimilate it. We are on overload. Only the young have the time and energy to keep up, and they look to us -- the older generations -- to fund what they need to know to succeed. We don't know what to fund because we haven't kept up. We are caught in a Catch 22, spiraling down. 

The application to education is obvious. Considering that the primary role of public education is to level the playing field -- that is, to allow all children an equal opportunity to be prepared for the world ahead -- and considering that the gap in society is widening, then I'd say we have an even more challenging road ahead than we previously thought. It's one we'd best begin to travel and find solutions to early in the next century, rather than later. 

Bob Hughes is a member of the board of directors of the Lake Washington School District in Kirkland and Redmond, Wash. He is the president of the Educational Technology Exchange, a consulting firm located in Kirkland, Wash.; a frequent speaker on the topic of technology and schools; and a retired executive from the Boeing Company. 

Donald A. Norman 
I have long been struck by the power of the computer game to mesmerize, to hold the attention of otherwise restless children for hours and even days. I have watched otherwise unruly children focus, study, collaborate, and solve problems. They read hint books and save checkpoints, the better to be able to try "what-if" scenarios. They consult; they create; they solve. They do all the activities we wish them to do in pursuit of an education: What a shame that what is being learned is so trivial, so worthless. 

Now imagine a time when we transform education. When we can craft educational problems as cleverly as the game creators create theirs, allowing students to delve into the complexity of topics as deeply and as thoroughly as they delve into the games. Excite them to dive into the task, voluntarily working hard to learn the skills necessary to succeed. Only this time, the skills learned will be the ones necessary to be successful, well-educated citizens of society: mathematics, history, writing, science, art, and so on. 

Technology is not the answer to the ailments of education. All of us succeeded in an educational system that was mainly empty of technology. But technology can help. It can motivate, it can make visible what is otherwise not, and it can allow for the study of the complex, taking care of the drudgery and allowing for concentration on the profound. It can be patient. It can give endless rewards and challenges. It continually engages the mind. And it provides a new, more rewarding role for the teacher as a guide, mentor, and fellow explorer of knowledge. 

The proper technology, coupled with proper teachers, can indeed transform. Learning is through doing, or though what I once proclaimed was a state of "critical confusion." People learn best, I argued, when challenged -- just enough to be confused, just enough to be motivated to search, to struggle, and to achieve. 

We learn not by having our heads filled with the great thoughts and ideas of others, but by constructing them within our own conceptual structures. But this construction works best when the scenario is rigged so as to lead us to the ideas, to force us to confront them and understand them. This is what the successful game designer does. This is what the successful educator must do. 

Technology is not the answer, but proper technology coupled with informed pedagogy, coupled with teachers who are coaches, guides, and mentors, can lead the way. 

Donald A. Norman is president of UNext Learning Systems and professor emeritus of cognitive science and psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Formerly a researcher and executive with Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard, he is the author, most recently, of The Invisible Computer. 

Dave Hughes 
Communities, school boards, and educational leaders should already be looking forward to the diminishment of the classroom -- the edifice called a "school" -- in formal K-12 education. The classroom was originally designed to emulate the workplace, where people gathered and did what the foreman (teacher) told them. Only a small proportion of future work will be done that way; instead, a huge part will be done remotely, collaboratively, with self-discipline, and in teams of people who come together and part after a task is done. 

Education should model this trend, using telecommunications to link students with the school and each other across the world. That does not mean that students should not attend much smaller -- and less expensive -- physical schools at least two days a week, where socialization, normal human face-to-face communications, athletics, and the use of resources that can't be taken home can take place. And they can learn how to take the next technological leap. Even today, advanced wireless technologies exist that give very high bandwidth at no cost across school district boundaries and that can facilitate this for all students, not just some. School can in large part be a place where one learns how to learn. 

That can and should also lead to K-99 education, where K-12 and college are but formal interludes in a lifetime of learning -- and teaching -- by everyone, using the coming untethered, personally affordable, always-mobile global communications devices that will connect people to the rest of the world and each other. 

Dave Hughes is a partner in Old Colorado City Communications, an Internet and digital wireless company that has pioneered the use of wireless digital communications for education and community networking in remote areas. 

Lowell Monke 
For a century now we have witnessed progressively more impressive inventions being heralded as the great reformer, if not savior, of education. Perhaps it is time for a bit of sober reassessment. For many of us who have spent a good portion of our lives teaching in public schools, the legacy of educational technology may be best summed up by Theodore Roszak in his book The Cult of Information, in which he observed that "we live in a time when the technology of human communication has advanced at blinding speed; but what people have to say to one another by way of that technology shows no comparable development." 

Today we have magnificent means for communication in place. Our students have more information than they can deal with. In fact, we have reached the point where these powerful tools of learning have begun interfering with -- more than helping -- our ability to teach and learn how to say meaningful things to each other. 

Perhaps the most important lesson we can carry with us into the new millennium concerning educational technology is that it has far less to offer us than its promoters promised, and much more to challenge us. The great irony of so many futuristic visions of education is that they are based on a 19th-century faith that the unfettered development of technology will automatically result in improved human welfare. If the 20th century has taught us anything it should be that this faith is no longer credible. If we are to really prepare our youth to determine, rather than be determined by, the direction technology takes, then we have to reverse the trend of teaching children to rely on high technology and start helping them understand the Faustian relationship we have with it. 

Given the advances in medical, genetic, and computer engineering, it seems to me that the most crucial educational task of the 21st century will be to develop within our children the insight and strength, the ethical and moral sensibilities, to determine when and how to say No to technological "progress." As never before, our children will be confronted with the questions of what it means to be human, what it means to be "real," even what it means to be alive. These are issues that can't be left to technicians working in laboratories or media moguls sitting in boardrooms. They are fundamental to the character of civilization itself and ought to be at the center of our educational efforts for all young people right now. But today's youth will have no hope of even understanding the significance of these issues if, throughout their educational careers, this same technology is invisibly infused throughout their learning environment, as so many educational technologists would have us do. 

Entering the new millennium we are faced with a new irony: In order to truly understand and control our ever more powerful technologies, it is imperative that we learn to better understand ourselves as human beings, an age-old quest for which high technology is now the problem, not the cure. 

Lowell Monke is assistant professor of education at Grinnell College. For nearly two decades he taught high school and elementary youth with and about computers. He is coauthor of a forthcoming book titled The 'Net Effect: Of Telecollaboration In Our Classrooms. 

Nancy Willard 
When Pandora opened the box of knowledge, she paved the way to greater freedom and individual rights because she broke through the locks of centralized control that had restricted access to that knowledge. Access to knowledge, and the freedom it brings, can lead to destruction or to hope. 

Our children are growing up in a world that is being transformed by interactive communications technologies. These technologies provide individuals with access to a wide range of information and the ability to interact with others in digital global communities. Such access and interactions are largely outside any externalized control mechanisms. What will make the difference in how individuals behave when they have such freedom? 

The path that leads to hope is the path that is walked by people with personal integrity and the strength of character to do what is right, even though they have the freedom to do otherwise. 

As adults seeking to prepare our young people for success in their future, we have to recognize that their future is one that will require a high level of internalized control to engage in responsible behavior in environments where external control mechanisms are not present. We must be diligent in instilling in young people a strong sense of justice, caring, and respect for the rights of others, and an understanding of the importance of behaving in accord with the common good. It is important also to recognize that young people will learn not through our words, but through our actions. 

Nancy Willard is project director for the Responsible Netizen project at the Center for Advanced Technology in Education at the College of Education, University of Oregon. 

Barry Kort and Nancy Williams 
Technology offers the education community an unparalleled opportunity to create virtual worlds and simulations in which children may immerse themselves. It's the playfulness of this learning environment that makes it so enthralling, fascinating, and compelling to students. It lets them exercise their senses, emotions, cognition, and creative problem solving -- all in a setting that looks more like fun than work. But there is no substitute for kind, caring, one-on-one attention from a teacher to a student. 

What does the future hold? We think the best technology will blend the power of computer games with educational content drawn from science, math, literature, history, and the arts. In the short time that computers and computer networking have been available to schools, some pioneering educators have provided ingenious resources that are revolutionizing the way children learn, supplanting the obsolescent classroom model with highly individualized project-based learning. 

The next big push will introduce affective computing -- in which the computing system and software will recognize and evaluate the affective emotional state of the learner and adapt the pace, complexity, and direction of the learning adventure accordingly, to keep the learner maximally centered in the "zone of flow" -- neither bored, anxious, frustrated, nor bewildered, but optimally enthralled and engaged with successful learning. 

Barry Kort and Nancy Williams are collaborators on the MuseNet Project, a Multi-User Science Education Network of Internet-accessible text-based virtual communities where participants collaborate to build their own world in the constructivist model of learning. Kort develops educational technology and carries out research in learning theory in Cambridge, Mass. Williams teaches and does research in electronic journalism at Utah State University. 

Howard Rheingold 
If technology is not thoughtfully integrated into schools, adding computers and Internet access could add to educational problems rather than solving them. We face two separate problems that must be approached in parallel: Educational institutions are in need of reform, and computer technology is both an essential component of contemporary life and a potentially powerful educational tool. Computers won't solve the problems of the educational system, and ignoring the need to integrate technology into education will exacerbate those problems. We can't afford to do nothing. We can't afford to do the wrong thing. We need to start by thinking about what we are doing. 

Even if computers, Internet connections, and unlimited Internet access could be donated to schools, support and training constitute a significant ongoing expense -- some experts say that over the life of the infrastructure, support costs are 10 times the cost of the hardware and software. Unless training and support are planned and budgeted, the latest "computer revolution" could fail for the same reason the personal computer revolution failed to revolutionize education in the 1980s. 

Access to inappropriate material such as pornography and hate literature, and ethical challenges such as software piracy, plagiarism, and collaborative work that shades into cheating, are issues that must be dealt with at a community level, through a dialogue among students, teachers, and parents. These dialogues should lead to acceptable-use policies that parents and students must sign before Internet access is granted to students. 

Using computers and networks simply as new tools for delivering information is a strategy doomed to failure. Instead, computers can be used to amplify the social aspect of learning, make abstractions visible and concrete, and engage students in constructing projects that capture their attention. Teachers should have access to recipe books of best practices, and access to the pioneers who have already explored the territory. And they should be paid for the time they spend learning how to use technology to fit their own teaching practices. 

The issue of school reform is crucial. If the costs and practices associated with introducing educational technology interfere with the goals of reducing class size, increasing incentives for effective teaching, and establishing standards and benchmarks for teaching and learning, then the new technologies could make old problems worse.

It isn't too late to think about the right way to bring computers, students, teachers, and communities together. If we don't, we'll miss opportunities, doom hopes, and waste money. 

Howard Rheingold, founder of the Electric Minds web site, is author of The Virtual Community, Virtual Reality, and Tools for Thought. 

Brenda Laurel 
My most immediate hope for the future is that programs like Elliot Soloway's work in Detroit get broader support and better funding. The software that Elliot's group has designed and the way it has been used with children are the best of what educational technology has to offer, in my view. 

I would also hope that online mentoring will find a place in our culture. The Internet and its successors may provide ways to recapture the energy of apprenticeship and duplicate, in some ways, the resources of extended families. Elders have much to teach children, and vice versa, and it would be a good thing to create online architectures where such discourse could become a regular part of life. 

Brenda Laurel is a designer, researcher, and writer whose work focuses on interactive narrative, human-computer interaction, and cultural aspects of technology. She was one of the founders and VP/design of Purple Moon, a company formed to market products based on her research activities at Interval Research Corporation exploring gender and technology. 

Chris Dede 
Emerging digital technologies enable educators to complement face-to-face classroom instruction with students' participation in virtual communities of learners. Just as teamwork across barriers of distance and time is becoming routine in today's workplace, teaching in the future will incorporate online student groups that collaborate to create, share, and master knowledge. Both in and out of school, these learning communities will supplement conventional class instruction with virtual interactions involving distant resources, peers, and experts. 

The reasons for making this shift go beyond simply aiding more students to reach a higher standard of achievement in today's curriculum (e.g., having all pupils take more advanced math courses, or raising everyone's scores on standardized tests). While these objectives are desirable, such improvements in traditional educational outcomes are not enough to prepare pupils for 21st century civilization. 

Children also need to master higher-order cognitive, affective, and social skills not central to mature industrial societies but vital in a knowledge-based economy. These include "thriving on chaos" (making rapid decisions based on incomplete information to resolve novel situations); creating, sharing, and mastering knowledge by filtering a sea of quasi-accurate information; and accomplishing tasks via collaborating with a diverse team -- face-to-face or across distance. These are no longer capabilities that only "gifted and talented" students need to master; sustaining prosperity and justice in a knowledge-based economy governed by democratic political methods requires that all citizens in our society be adept in these higher-order skills. 

We have the technical and economic capabilities to develop technology-rich learning environments for children that prepare them for life as adults in a world very different than we have known. Whether we have the political and cultural will to accomplish innovative, equity-enhancing shifts in learning and schooling remains to be seen. 

Chris Dede is a professor in the Schools of Education and Information Technology and Engineering at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. 

Tim Comolli 
JR was one of the most disagreeable characters ever to have walked the halls of South Burlington High. Thirty years ago his father had also attended our high school. A mean-spirited man with the beginnings of a serious drug problem, he went on to marry his high school sweetheart. JR was the first child of that union. Dad's drug problem escalated, and one night when JR was a very small boy, dad came home high on a variety of drugs and alcohol. JR was sleeping with his mother when the father proceeded to shoot her up with a lethal dose of heroin. JR watched her die. 

The father was sent to prison and the youngster became, as one might imagine, a serious problem child. He became unmanageable. He was assigned a personal teacher as he traveled throughout the school day. His violence became legendary throughout the school district. By the time he reached high school, most counselors and teachers had given up on him. Most people were certain that he would never be able to survive in a "normal" world and would, indeed, "end up like his father." 

One day as he and his case manager passed the Imaging Lab, he was attracted by the flurry of animations playing on the screens. He quietly walked into the room and found himself in the company of students who were headed for major careers in animation and computer science. He sat down. He became enthralled with the computer. He made emotional contact with the kids, and they helped him learn the basics. 

This one moment of interest and success translated into a passion for the Imaging Lab and his work. His grades improved; his work became acceptable, and then went on to become praiseworthy. Teachers were amazed at the transformation. His caseworker still lists JR as the greatest success story of the decade. JR went on to help teach computer courses for both students and teachers alike. He was asked to present his material by the state of New Jersey Education Department for its Education Summit. Today, JR is attending college and will emerge as an excellent computer graphics animator and move into a world willing to pay him top dollar for his skills. 

Tim Comolli is director of the Imaging Lab at South Burlington High School in South Burlington, Vt. He is the 1999 Technology & Learning magazine's Teacher of the Year. 

Carol Simpson 
Ownership of intellectual property will gain new importance in the upcoming millennium. Copyright owners, recognizing that ever-improving technology makes copying, adapting, distributing, performing, and displaying their materials child's play, will take a more aggressive role in asserting their intellectual property rights. This development will mean more cease-and-desist letters, more threats of legal action, more cases to set an example. As a result, schools will become "gun-shy" -- they will fail to exercise their legitimate rights under fair use for fear of nuisance suits entered by aggressive materials producers who have an unlimited supply of in-house legal expertise. 

With congressional testimony and federal judges making comments questioning the viability of fair use because of the ease of licensing, failure on the part of schools and educators to assert their fair-use rights will contribute to a generation of information have-nots, especially in poorer school districts. Those who cannot afford to license materials, even in modest amounts, will find that they have returned to a pencil, paper, and textbook model of education. 

New technologies of instructional delivery, such as web-based and video instruction, will bring ownership of intellectual property to light in schools. Schools that once only consumed intellectual property will now discover that they own it and will want to convert it into a revenue stream. Teachers who once would have created and freely shared instructional materials in print format will recognize that they have contributed to a valuable commodity (electronic course materials) and may resist "work for hire" rules, or at least bargain for some compensation. Expanded and extended rights of copyright holders will reclaim some materials that have traditionally been public domain as electronic publishers fight to increase revenues from heretofore unprotectable materials. 

In sum, copyright will be a buzz word -- and possibly a word to take in vain -- in the coming years, especially as declining fair use and increasing revenues reinforce the idea that free use of intellectual property -- no matter small the amount or how altruistic the purpose -- is bad business. 

Carol Simpson is an assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas in Denton. She is author of Copyright for Schools: A Practical Guide and a frequent speaker on copyright, privacy, and ethics issues for schools and libraries. 

Reproduced with permission from the January 2000 issue of Electronic School. Copyright © 2000, National School Boards Association. Electronic School is an editorially independent publication of the National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed by this magazine or any of its authors do not necessarily reflect positions of the National School Boards Association. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6739.