ABSTRACT
Computer software can manage intricate operations and complex data in order to make sociological ideas and methods concrete, animated, and relevant even to novices. The appearance of personal computers in the late 1970s offered the promise of a new channel of communication for expressing sociological insights. Computers, indeed, can be a means of communicating sociological ideas to a wide audience, but publication-reader is not the paradigm that applies. Furthermore, even during the period of intensive introduction to computers, more than half of the class time was devoted to substantive issues rather than technical matters. Computing technology allows sociology to be brought alive within a classroom and supports powerful research tools that even novices can use for practical social analyses. Computers may work best educationally as a medium for ensemble instruction, with the so ciologist conducting via a projection screen and computers on everyone's desk providing the facility for doing sociology together.
