ABSTRACT
Compared with other chapters in this book, what follows will strike a somewhat sceptical note. It is inevitable and wholly proper that other contributors, who are protagonists of the use of computers in education, should be suffused with optimism and perhaps even outright enthusiasm. I come to the issue of computers in education from an interest in the fate of educational innovations. Seen from this perspective, the potential widespread adoption of computers in schools must be treated in a most guarded manner. The recent history of education is littered with the corpses of innovations which have been abandoned and often left little trace. In the case of materials and hardware' they have often had a decent burial in the bottom cupboard of the teacher who continues to confront the perennial tasks of teaching in a highly conventional way. There have, of course, been changes in the organization and methods of teaching and learning. Classrooms are now different places from what they were, say, 20 or more years ago, but in truth they are not all that much different. Innovations have come and gone and the educational world has not been radically transformed. For a good 20 years we have been teetering on the brink of an 'educational revolution', but it has never arrived. The means to achieve this revolution have been to hand. We can all conjure up a model of a school which is truly different from that in which teaching and learning
currently occurs. Such a model is usually characterized by openness and flexibility. It will include such features as interdisciplinary studies, flexible grouping, independent learning, collaborative teaching, open-plan architecture, resource centres, personalized study programmes and an Aladdin's cave of audio-visual devices and computers available both to teachers and pupils. And yet it has not happened. Disappointed protagonists of such changes have blamed costs, inflexible management, and unenlightened teachers, but the matter is much more complex than that.
