Bringing The Internet To School: Lessons From An Urban District

"Practical, detailed advice about how to incorporate the Internet into instruction and why these new tools require new frames and supports for practice. High school educators will be especially interested to read how Internet projects can engage and empower high school students in new ways." --Milbrey W. McLaughlin, David Jacks Professor of Education and Public Policy, Stanford University

"A superb book.... Required reading for those who seek to understand the social and organizational forces that shape different patterns of Internet use. This is the best book I know of to help teachers and schools make their hopes about learning from (and with) the Internet into reality." --David C. Berliner, Regents' Professor of Education, Arizona State University

"Schofield and Davidson's pioneering study of how the local cultures of schooling shape the ways that teachers and students actually use Internet services in practice should be read by any educator who wants to realistically understand the opportunities and limitations of Internet use in North American schools." --Rob Kling, editor, "The Information Society," the journal of the Center for Social Informatics

"The best study of computers in schools I've read.... I finished the book with a much better sense of why the Internet offers such promise-and such threat-to education as our children, parents, teachers, and technical specialists experience it today." --Sara Kiesler, professor, Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University

"Makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the potential and challenges associated with integrating technologies into schools...illustrates the many ways in which effectivetechnology use is both facilitated and hindered by the cultural practices of schooling. This book is of great service to anyone wrestling with how to make technologies work as effective teaching and learning tools in schools." --Margaret Honey, vice president and director, Education Development Center, Center for Children and Technology

Bringing the Internet to School presents the results of one of the first comprehensive studies of Internet-implementation in K-12 schools. Based on the information gleaned from this groundbreaking study, two experts in the field of high-technology and schools, Janet Ward Schofield and Ann Locke Davidson, examine the myriad issues that arise when the Internet is introduced into the classroom. This important book reveals the positive and negative consequences that Internet use has on classroom equity, academics, and social life. For example, while Internet access often changes student-teacher roles and relationships in positive ways and gives students new, exciting, and useful source for information and feedback, it also provides students with a tempting distraction from their studies and can exacerbate inequities in the classroom. Throughout the book, the authors illuminate the ways in which the existing culture and structure of schools shape Internet use, the ways students' and teachers' experiences are affected by it, and the technical and systemic challenges involved in bringing the Internet to schools.