The preceding chapters have addressed two very important questions about the relationship between technology and education. Expressed in its most general form, the first of these is, What is the effect of the instructional use of computer technology on students and on classroom social process? The second is, How does the social context in which computers are used for instruction shape their use? These two questions are inextricably related since factors that shape the use of instructional technology are thereby likely to influence its impact. This point is made in its starkest form by noting that educational technology that remains completely unused, because teachers see little to be gained from it or because they do not have the institutional support they need to learn how to use it readily, will be unlikely to affect students, teachers, or their classrooms in any substantial manner.

Anyone who has read the preceding chapters, or who is for other reasons familiar with the plethora of computer applications that are available today, will realize that the quest to delineate a set of inevitable consequences of instructional computing is, most likely, futile. Applications are as varied as artificially intelligent tutors, word processing packages, drill and practice programs, and wide-area networking. As discussed in Chapter 1, computer use varies in its nature, frequency, intensity, and centrality to the curriculum. Students work singly or with others. Expecting unvarying effects from such disparate uses of computer technology is unrealistic.