The impact of Internet on ITEM: Educational management in preparation for the future

Schools of the future will no longer be islands on their own, The common saying that “it takes a village to educate a child” might have to be re-worded as “it takes the globe to educate a child”! The world is shrinking, metaphorically speaking, in space and time as IT advances. Recent studies suggest that there are now in USA alone more than 100,000 E-mail accounts on state educational networks, and approximately 600,000 networking students in private and grassroots initiatives. With the expansion of global networking, educators have many pressing issues to reconsider. How different, for instance, will the schooling process become in the next decade? This paper is no attempt to give any positive answer. It is an attempt instead to give a snapshot of the current state of affairs on the Internet in connection with education and ITEM in particular. Prospects are discussed and questions are raised. The intent is to generate interest from participants in the ‘2nd IFIP International Working Conference on ITEM’ in developing a vision for which educational administrators need to prepare. Copyright © 1997 Chapman & Hall on behalf of the International Federation for Information Processing.