ABSTRACT
If the use of computers in education has often been bedevilled by alternating between wild claims and dismissive remarks, then the more recent development of the use of those computers to access the Internet has seen this alternation of extremes become ever more exaggerated. The proponents and opponents of Internet use in schools, aptly described in one recent book as the ‘cybercritics’ and the ‘cybertopians’ (Papert, 1996), have consumed large areas of media coverage in newspapers and on television. Generalised criticisms of the claimed potential of the Internet to transform society (Stoll, 1995) have been followed by more measured and specific critical analysis of current policy (Selwyn, 1998).
