COLLOQUY

1. Increased consultation with teachers about what resources and training they think would be helpful as they seek to adapt their skills and their material to a changing world.

2. Improved school adaptation of new techniques and technologies, to the extent that teachers, administrators, and parents feel that such changes are helpful to the missions that schools are coming to take up.

3. Greater parental familiarity and comfort with new technical capabilities for inquiry, analysis and entertainment.

This is not to say that new tools are not useful or justified. Undeniably computers and telecommunications networks can be exciting and productive, helping to grab the attention and enthusiasm of bored or underachieving students as well as those highly motivated and able. These technologies can enable teachers to work less in isolation, with a greater sense of community, and with more resources and opportunities than many have ever had. The liberatory possibilities are there, no question about it.

But we should not extrapolate too quickly from the glowing reports from some on the front lines. There are risks, technological, organizational, and institutional, involved in a massive introduction of these new systems. Without caution here, we risk encountering an educational Hawthorne Effect.

-- Todd M. La Porte, Associate professor, Delft U. of Technology, the Netherlands (posted 1/12, 12:15 p.m., E.S.T.)

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