Learning and the E-Generation

Foreword

We envisaged this sequel to Computers and learning: Helping children acquire thinking skills (Underwood & Underwood, 1990) would appear as a belated millennium offering but work pressures and the rapidity of change in this field caused us first to delay and then to rethink roles. Those pressures led to Geoff Underwood stepping aside while a new co-author joined me in completing the text. I would like to thank Geoff for his generosity and Lee for his hard work in producing this text for Wiley.

We would like to thank the many Blackwell’s production staff associated with this project for their tireless support and patience. At times they must have despaired of ever seeing a completed manuscript.

Much of our own work reported here emanates from a very fruitful and long-standing association with BECTA and there are many of the staff of that now lost champion of digital learning we could and should thank. Please forgive us if we name just three: Peter Avis, Di Levine and Vanessa Pittard have always acted more as partners than sponsors of our research.

Several teams of researchers contributed to studies reported in this text. Central to those teams have been: Alison Ault, Thom Baguley, Phil Banyard, Sue Cavendish, Emily Coyne, Gayle Dillon, Mary Hayes, Tony Lawson, Ian Selwood, Bridget Somekh, James Stiller and Peter Twining. Firstly Sue, then Gayle and Phil, have been rocks on which much of this work has been built.

Finally, thank you to the many children, teachers and schools ...