Why not use the Internet to bring world-class science into the schoolhouse?
A favorite gambit here is to invite students to program some laboratory’s robot across the Net. One research organization, for example, lets students drive a robot called “Nero” around the Chamber of Horrors in Madame Tussauds, London. But such arrangements do not make scientists into teachers. If one scientist can efficiently spread himself around a lot of classrooms, it is precisely because he doesn’t really have to be there. It is no accident that robotics should be a common focus, because the real effect of these projects is to direct children increasingly toward instrument-mediated information. A thousand children cannot all interact with the scientist personally; what they can do is interact with software. So the students come away with a few scattered, undigested facts about the operation of remote-controlled vehicles, and no knowledge at all about the more approachable engineering principles–including the principles of computing–upon which modern society is based.
