ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a conceptual framework for understanding how computer-mediated learning, which still relies on print as the principal means of communication, perpetuates students' conceptual misunderstandings and thus limits their awareness that all aspects of life are emergent, relational, and co-dependent. It provides an overview of how the paradigm that emphasized a mechanistic view of organic processes, of individual autonomy in a human-centered world, and of science and technology leading to endless progress and material abundance, is now being challenged. The chapter explores how the current educational reforms that rely more heavily upon computers reinforce the long-held cultural pattern of ignoring relationships and thus the ecology of influences that carry forward a long history of previous influences. The exercise of ecological intelligence requires being aware of what is being communicated through the relational information pathways and recognizing when the information is a sign of a destructive relationship.
