On one hand, you are going to learn ways of integrating (important word, remember it) computers into your teaching practice.

On another hand, you are going to be forced to learn with computers.

Throughout this process, we would like you to think about how electronic media, computers in particular, might be changing the ways we educate, or to put it another way, how classroom cultures will need to change to accommodate these new media.

The picture at the top of this page, for example, is taken from MayaQuest (http://www.mecc.com/mayaquest.html). MayaQuest linked scientists in the Yucatan with students in classrooms across the world to do real science (and to share in a real adventure). Responsibility for choosing activities, things, even places to explore was shared between the members of the MayaQuest expedition and teachers and students in participating classrooms. Lessons and curricula evolved; outcomes were never certain, but learning was situated and meaningful.

At perhaps the other extreme, Karen did research for the New York City Board of Education on Integrated Learning Systems (ILSs), large scale computing systems designed to deliver individualized instruction and practice in mathematics and language arts for first through twelfth grade levels. She looked at 14 different ILSs in nearly eighty different schools, and eventually got interested in the interactions between students and teachers (human teachers) in computer-based classrooms. She found that interactions between the same students and the same teachers about the same subject areas were not only fifteen times more individualized than in their regular classrooms, but that students were just as likely to initiate interactions as teachers (who in regular classrooms dominate the discourse three or four to one).

Of course, most of us are not feeling the effects of computer usage, because for most of us, computers have not reached the "critical mass" necessary to make a difference. In The Children's Machine, Seymour Papert points out that a nineteenth century doctor or a nineteenth century banker would be hard put to recognize, let alone use, the twentieth century tools of their trade. A nineteenth century teacher, on the other hand, would be at home in a twentieth century classroom because not much has changed. Not much has changed because we still haven't incorporated new media into classroom cultures.

But we will. We will, or we will be replaced. That is what happened to the scribal society of the Medieval Europe after the invention of the printing press in 1492. The invention of printed texts, in fact, gave rise to schooling as we know it. If we do not change the way we do things to take into consideration what electronic media make possible (and difficult), we may end up like the scribes.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to successfully integrating computers into schools is the abysmal lack of adequate training for teachers. Which is why this course is important.

The most important thing you need to learn from it is how to support your own learning about educational computing because what you need to know changes everyday. Believe it or not, this course is structured the way it is for a reason.

It is also important that you pay attention to that structure and learn (if you don't already know) how to structure your own learning. We hope that you will also develop some ideas about supporting your own students in similar activities because we really believe that computers are taking education in that direction. Don't let yourself fall too far behind. The best way to do that is to try and stay ahead of the tentative schedule.

So find the people and places and texts and mantras you need to get it done. We are always here to help.

And just in case you haven't understood a word we said, there is a very good glossary of computing terms to translate for you at http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html

May the force be with you.