Author Description

It is our conviction that a more productive orientation for the uses of technologies in education will result if one begins instead with the processes of education, and with the learner rather than the computer in the spotlight of inquiry. We find that the age of information makes new demands on the ways we think about education and on research relating to it. The nature of children's cognitive capabilities when knowledge-based tools are made available to support their thinking is a challenging terrain to explore. Moreover, the significance of social contexts and culture to students' learning with new technologies become all the more central to understand as the mutual influences of technology and context become apparent. This book of essays is testimony to that conviction, and reveals the plethora of complex basic issues one faces in doing research centered on the learner and the educational process rather than the machine.