Breaking Down the Digital Walls is a compilation of a series of articles alternating between co-authors Burniske and Monke. Each article is an “argument” regarding the world of technology, the Internet, telecollaboration, and the authors struggle to use technology to find and teach truth in education. The authors struggle through multiple telecollaborative projects and reflection to teach beyond the accessing of information in order to achieve their ultimate goal of creating “dialogue, dialectic, and open-minded inquiry” (foreword, p. x).

Monke and Burniske, two teachers that met in a café, developed a relationship and continued their dialectic online long after being separated by geography. Their relationship spawned from a conversation in which they were trying to find more effective ways to teach. Through years of intensive telecollaborative projects and reflective argument, the two struggled to create a learning environment that broke down the digital walls. These arguments were not hostile, but constructive in aim and used to refine the other's argument. These arguments, or dialectics, were an intentional and central piece in their telecollaborative model. So the question remains; how did the teachers' dialectics lead to a breaking down of the digital walls?

The two teachers, both teaching at the Academia Cotopaxi in Quito, Ecuador, began their adventure in the nearby Manabi Hut café. Burniske describes the meeting of the future co-authors and how their relationship developed from guarded, critical, egocentric, politically correct educators, to open, supportively critical friends seeking truth. They were seeking truth in life, in education, and in the world of technology. They describe the need to confess ignorance and uncertainty before being able to get past the academia ego that separates many educators from seeking truth. According to the Burniske, the truth is that the Internet does not present the truth. The student must interact with multiple sources and critically analyze the information to build a more holistic understanding. The Internet can, unfortunately, be used to support any perspective if not used to seek the truth. Burniske looks beyond the “happy ending” format of most media in our society and reminds us that most real-life situations and conflicts have no resolution. In life, the process of seeking truth is what really matters. Our modern culture tends to ignore truth in order to reach conclusion and resolution. As stated by Burniske: “to invent better paradigms for educational telecomputing we must include multiple perspectives and complex interactions within a community that respectfully embraces the indispensable opposition” (p.15).

The concept of “opposition” is a reoccurring theme in the authors' approach to dialectic interaction and telecollaboration. Monke believes that antagonism towards self, opposition, and the computer breed results and possibly truth. The author poses the question, “how is computer technology going to help my students develop...insight, creativity, and good judgement...to serve my students' search for meaning in their learning and in their lives” (p.19)? These truth-seeking qualities are believed by Monke to be bypassed by technology and our educational culture. Comprehension is actually avoidable with technology. Within our present culture, it is possible to be skilled in language and math without understanding as long as we have a vocation and survival skills. Monke is critical of the effect of technology on our culture, but acknowledges its pros and cons. The benefits are more apparent than the cons, thus we must dig deep to discover the negative side effects. Side effect of new technology “tend to be long-term and are felt only with experience” (p.21). Monke insists that we must be observant and aware of the “mixed blessing” of technology.

The computer is widely accepted as a powerful, world-changing tool but we lose a great deal with this new technology. People spend less time with nature, real human interaction, and physical activity. We increasingly develop and rely upon our ability to collect and organize information without critical analysis, which potentially leads to a reduction of comprehension. According to Monke, both advocates and critics of the computer note that, “the computer encourages an appreciation for efficiency, measurability, objectivity, rationality, progress, and the accumulation and manipulation of data” (p.25). These values may or may not be positive, but still yet, Monke believes that the computer misses the following more important set of values: “The pursuit of truth, the comprehension of complex ideas, the generation of one's own ideas, the discovery of meaning, the use of good judgement, the exercise of emotional maturity, and the development of wisdom” (p.26). Monke does not intend to blame the computer for existing educational problems. He believes our societies willingness to reduce learning to “that which is material, mechanical, and measurable” (p.26) promotes an economic view of life, which exacerbates the difficulties in achieving our educational goals. In order to compensate for the mechanistic qualities of computers, it is essential that teachers bring all “resources of self” out of the students and into the learning process. Monke spends a great deal time discussing the dangers and shortcomings of the computer, but his aim is to encourage teachers to balance out, or compensate, the negatives with positives. Without the critical awareness of the negatives, though, it is difficult to offer balance.

Monke and Burniske see the inability of the computer itself to enhance the aforementioned values as the battlegrounds around which education and technology must revolve. Herein lies the struggle. How can educators shape education to utilize technology to build these values in our students, thus breaking down the digital walls? Technology, the computer, and the Internet offer educators the environment in which they may pioneer a “new synthesis of education” while essentially bypassing our past (and present) educational, political, and societal preconceptions of education. We must struggle and antagonize the present model to achieve the results we seek.

Beginning in chapter 3, Burniske begins to describe some of the projects, the evolutionary character of telecollaborative learning, and the need for reflection upon project design and implementation. Now working at an international school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Burniske was presented with the challenge of teaching in a school affected by a government-censored culture. As the rapid industrial development of Kuala Lumpur was underway, so was the school's transformation from a small, intimate environment to a networked, media-influenced, difficult to control, competitive school. The significance of the school's transformation is in its parallel to the rapid growth of not only Kuala Lumpur, but to that of the world's access to the web and the school's ironic increase in bureaucratic policy. Due to this web access, Burniske was enabled to “censor the censors” (p.33), with his telecollaborative project entitled Project Utopia. The project had students go outside of conventional media, expand on the required curricular readings, and create utopias. Burniske and his students bypassed local and school culture, censorship, and administrative curricular control while staying within the stated curriculum. Although initial access was limited, by 1994, his school had open access to email, which dramatically opened the gates for telecollaboration.

As both teachers and students tussled over the years that followed through multiple new and reinvented telecollaborative projects, they were able to refine and reevaluate their methods and purpose. Some methods varied, but their purpose always came back to helping students “understand the difference between the narrow knowledge attained through information processing and the ever expanding truth that waits to be revealed through the dialogue of human beings” (p.228). Dialectic leads one to search for truth, often resulting in doubt, and ultimately truth. The truth, however, is not easily understood or constructed. Monke refers to the truth in terms of “our own situations with regard to [the] learning activity; or, as [Burniske] put it at the very beginning, to discover things the way they really are, not as we wish them to be” (p.225).

Without going into the details of the projects, it can be said that telecollaboration, in the true sense of collaboration described by the authors, is a “vehicle” by which the digital walls can be broken down. It is no small responsibility, however, to create or participate in a telecollaborative project. The time commitment and responsibility to the other participants is quite a largeÉwell, responsibility. As the authors discuss, the tendency to dehumanize our interactions with other people by treating them as commodity or information is common and needs to be looked at closely. This is yet another weakness of interacting through technology. We need to help our students (and ourselves) to remember that we are “talking” with real people on the other end of the wire. It is our responsibility to allow this interaction to become a real relationship. This is no simple task, but without true dialectic, the interaction remains superficial. The interaction also needs to be a true exchange and not a consumer-commodity relationship. The dialectic approach to interaction must remain consistently at the core of the telecollaboration.

To claim that Monke and Burniske are optimistic about the future of education, the Internet, and society would be missing much of the point of Breaking Down the Digital Walls. They are quite the opposite of optimistic. Their purpose in setting out on the telecollaboration mission has been motivated by their desire to find an antidote to the apparent decline in the truth, soul, and integrity of our shortsighted, shallow, automaton-like, society of mass consumption.

Technology distracts learners from content with form. In one sense, if projects, including telecollaborative projects, place too much emphasis on web design form, the lesson can easily be lost. If students are drawn to well-designed web sites rather than sites with quality content, the lesson can be easily overlooked. The inclusion of technology at all has the potential of reducing the amount of time and focus we give to quality study and creation of content.

Surfing the web has led students (and teachers) to skim information from websites without critical analysis. Sure this can be a valuable skill, but this has become the norm for education. Efficient accumulation of information has overwhelmed in depth understanding and analysis. As explained by Monke and Burniske (respectively), “We replace a wide ranging knowledge for depth of understanding”...“Everything becomes of equal significance, which renders everything insignificant” (p.212). Monke continues, in their email exchange, to say, “everything [students] do is broadening...So they end up being shallow, unable to be critical because there is no deep foundation from which to judge new experiences.”

Corporate educational pre-packaged software and websites are being purchased by school systems, which is potentially “dumbing down” the curriculum and teachers ability to plan relevant, compelling lessons. Educational software does offer some benefits, “but at what cost,” posits the authors. This potentially carries severe consequences of deskilling (and disrespecting) the teacher.

The assumption that purchasing computers and networking capabilities will uplift education is imprudent. The costs negatively affect other areas of the curriculum. Teacher technology training tends to be under funded, yet is equally as important as purchasing of equipment. Schools have blindly followed the trend of spending exorbitant amounts of money to connect to the Internet. Is the cost warranted?

Worldwide, the hype of the Internet, or the “Global Village”, the “Information Highway”, the “Infobahn”, and “Cyberspace” has impacted globalization in some real ways. Worldwide communication is widespread, but it has its cultural and language barriers. How connected are we really? What about the vast majority of the world that is not connected? Have we become the Global (Technology Elitist) Village?

The fact that English is the language of the web likely seems advantageous to many Americans, yet does it allow us to have real communication, or does it limit our ability to really communicate? What impact does the spread of American popular culture have on some remote village in Africa, Western culture on Eastern culture? Some positive impact, I'm sure, but what about the negative impact? Dare I say that some Middle Eastern cultures do not appreciate our cultural influence? Does the Internet have anything to do with the recent rise in hatred and violence around the world? Or are we just more aware do to the Internet? Are we really aware of what's going on around the world, or is the Internet being used to spread propaganda?

Burniske and Monke focus a great deal of energy and time discussing the downfall of western civilization via technology and the Internet, but, I believe, genuinely with our students' and society's best interest in mind. They come with some remedies and potential solutions to our educational woes, but are pleading for the uprising of the resistance against corporate and government takeover of technology, curriculum, and essentially our futuresÉof our students' futures.

To Monke and Burniske, the breaking down of the digital walls entailed resisting the worldwide trend to accept the technology revolution without challenging its purpose and implementation. It entailed using the Internet and computers to create dialectic, relationships, collaboration, and depth in our students. It entailed creating struggle and the awareness in students that without struggle, resistance, and constructive argument, we are left only with acceptance. It entailed the need for educators to teach students to be more critically aware of how the Internet, our community, and media affect how we think, consume, and live. Monke and Burniske struggled to take education beyond the status quo of using computers to teach typing, applications, and (filtered/censored) web fact seeking. Telecollaboration, though never without its challenges, allowed the two teachers and their students the grounds on which they could reject societies blurred vision of education and technology and seek real learning and real truth.

Breaking Down the Digital Walls offers a truly compelling argument for any educator to both embrace the collaborative opportunity technology presents while remaining wary and attuned to its dangers and negative effects on society. Breaking Down the Digital Walls will cause any teacher, administrator, parent, or politician to reevaluate their vision of how we should educate students.

I have been inspired to pursue telecollaboration wholeheartedly. I believe in the vision painted by Burniske and Monke. I was previously aware of much of the negative and positive impact technology and the Internet have on education and society, but they presented the “information” in such a way that I cannot resist their plea to join the cause. I am guilty of teaching an application heavy technology curriculum, light on meaningful content. The telecollaborative format has presented me with a viable alternative to my existing curriculum. I will not attempt to replace everything I do with my students, but I intend to integrate telecollaboration into what we do. I will heed the lesson of Icarus. As quoted by Burniske,

I warn you Icarus, he said, you must follow a course midway between earth and heaven, in case the sun should scorch your feathers, if you go too high, or the water make them heavy if you are too low. Fly halfway between the two. --Ovid

I, too, seek truth, but I must not fly too high.