By Steve Rhine
Willamette University
“I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will
look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today
and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive.”
John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1968
Clarions marking the demise of traditional K-12 education have repeatedly been heard over the years. Technological advances are usually the motivating culprit. Edison (1922) wrote that “the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.” Needless to say, history said otherwise. From televisions to VCR’s to computers to handheld devices, the promise of a new age in education always seems to disappoint in the end. Cuban (1986) describes a cycle that is often repeated in the quest for change in education through technology: “exhilaration/scientific credibility/disappointment/teacher-bashing” (p. 5). The status quo is a powerful force. We develop comfort with our practices and institutionalize policies and attitudes that ensure a stable and predictable future. At the beginning of the decade there were great hopes that the Internet would be a place in which learners could interact and share knowledge as a way to transform the educational process (Kozma & Schank, 1998). Has the rise of the Internet changed K-12 education?