How to use the Internet as a tool for education focused on participatory action research.

What is it about?

Internet tools have penetrated our everyday activities with extraordinary speed. This is a double edged sword. Humans must learn to adapt to changes these tools bring to their lives so as not to be overwhelmed and overrun by large technological institutions. The Internet however also provides new opportunities for a more distributed, democratic society. The key over the next decades is for humans to learn how to use Internet tools in productive fashion in the service of human social progress. There is not alternative. This article suggests that the only social institutions large and pervasive enough to off this type of learning are schools. As John Dewey suggested a century ago, if humans are to develop a better society out of the new tools and abilities they have created it will start with the educative process. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is one educational approach for creating a new human covenant in the information age. Developed over the last half century to educate the marginalized and oppressed so they not only have skills, but a voice and agency in their lives. Integrating PAR into Internet-infused education will help set humans and their relationships with technology on a new, more democratic trajectory.

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Why is it important?

Beliefs about the effects of the Internet and related tools on humanity has bifurcated into two opposing camps. Those that see the Internet as creating necessary progress through "disruption" and those that see the Internet as a danger to human being. It is important to understand that the Interne is both and neither. Internet tools are just that - tools - whose purpose is determined by humans.