| BREAKING DOWN THE DIGITAL WALLS: LEARNING TO TEACH IN A POST-MODEM WORLD. presents a dialogue between a teacher of the humanities and his colleague in the computer sciences. It began while R.W. Burniske lived in Malaysia and collaborated via the Internet with Lowell Monke, a former colleague in Des Moines. As a whole, the book recounts many of the trials and tribulations this pair of veteran teachers encountered while creating and facilitating global, telecollaborative learning projects. They began the book with hopes of tempering the hype and hysteria that attend so many discussions of technology in education. Jonas Soltis, professor emeritus from Columbia University, has written the Foreword, which includes the following excerpt:
[This] is an exemplary joint authorship, not in one voice but in two. Alternating the writing of chapters, [the authors] speak to each other as well as to the reader. They both write clearly, engagingly and sincerely. They share a sound philosophical view of what ought to be the broad and basic educational aims of using the Internet in school; dialogue, dialectic and open minded inquiry. They write to a non technical audience and invite real and productive thought by teachers and administrators and policy makers about how to use the "information highway" to go well beyond the mere accessing of information. They even treat "netiquette" and the responsibilities of teachers and students using the Internet to communicate with others. They do all this with amazing verve and sophistication from the real context of their own collaborative teaching experiences. Their international school experience also adds a persuasive global dimension to their work. At heart, they are real teachers and have much to teach us all. This is a most welcome addition to the contemporary literature about computers and schooling. It should help to raise our thinking and talk to a new level of sophistication and high mindedness as we try to link the best educational aims of the past to the present and future of the electronic revolution. (From the foreword by Jonas Soltis, Breaking Down the Digital Walls: Learning to Teach in a Post-Modem World by R. W. Burniske and Lowell Monke, © 2001 State University of New York Press. Reprinted by permission of SUNY Press. (http://www.sunypress.edu/breaking.html).
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