The Impact of Internet Access on Designs for Internet Training

ABSTRACT

In recent years, two Massachusetts‐based organizations, a state university and a non‐government service agency, have collaborated to provide inservice and preservice assistance to teachers seeking to integrate Internet access into their curricula. Such assistance has ranged from simple workshops to full scale graduate level courses. Over time, the workshops and courses have been reshaped in the light of participant feedback and the escalating changes in the nature of Internet access. From an ‘early era’ (1993) of command and text‐based Internet exploration, workshops and courses have moved almost completely toward an examination of graphic user interface (GUI) tools such as MOSAIC and Netscape. Such a shift has created the conflict, however, of how to reconcile the constricted, low bandwidth Internet access of many schools with the need to examine state‐of‐the‐art tools and resources for teachers. This article examines how two educational organizations have addressed this dilemma, accompanied by a discussion of the importance of leadership and co‐ordination among diverse kinds of agencies serving the professional development needs of technology adopting elementary and secondary schools.