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2: Consider interactions between information technologies and educational practice as these play out in the fullness of time. Some events take place in a present tense that marks a short duration -- days, weeks, months, perhaps a year or two. Others unfold in a prolonged process that spans a long duration -- decades, generations, even centuries. Over such a long duration, innovations in information technologies are interacting with new educational practices to bring about significant changes in human experience. As actors in that drama, educators must determine the human worth of those changes through the character of their practice.
3: Some critics bemoan the sweep of historic change and wish it could be blocked. In education, that is neither feasible nor desirable. Around the world, a remarkably ubiquitous educational system works well for some and poorly for others. Its elitism and class bias is global, a structural feature of the educational system built over the past four centuries. Educators designed the traditional system to make optimal use of a powerful information technology, that of printed text. In our extended present, the means of communication available to educators are changing rapidly, and educators are now having to determine what they will accomplish with those changing conditions. This essay reflects explicitly about the potentialities inherent in the present situation in order to facilitate their social construction.
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