Yet along with all of this wonderment and infatuation with that which is new, what exactly are all of these gadgets doing for the educational system? The aforementioned thought is a question that will be looked at throughout this article and hopefully shed some light on the future of education. .
An online survey conducted by AT&T reports that 68% of parents, 69% of students, and 69% of teachers said that they have personally seen students" grades improve through use of the Internet (AT&T, 1998). The same article quotes, "more than half of the 2,416 respondents agreed the "the Internet has become a necessary tool for success in school."" Althaus (1997) states that students involved in the VC especially for discussions have reported higher grades and increased learning capacity than do other students who participate only in face-to-face classrooms. According to Witmer (1995), the VC "potentially facilitates discussion and debate, enables collaboration opportunities for experiential learning, enhances group cohesion among students, reduces communication anxiety, improves student perceptions of learning, provides a wide range of information resources, and extends access to university resources." Witmer apparently believes that some good that has come from CMC. Of course these studies can appear quite different when placed beside several opposing facts. In an introductory computer class in 1994, 14% of the students had never used a computer, 65% had never been involved in computer-mediated learning, and 70% said they had never heard of the term hypertext (Barnes, S., 1994). Some basic knowledge problems in the way of CMC lie largely in technical vocabulary comprehension. If 70% of a group of students does not know what the term "hypertext" means, they have a lesser chance of involving themselves in an online course. According to Witmer, students and educators think and speak of computer in metaphoric terms such as "signing on.