"The average Internet user in the United States spends three hours a day online, with much of that time devoted to work and more than half of it to communications, according to a survey conducted by a group of political scientists...the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, a research group that has been exploring the social consequences of the Internet.

...According to the study, an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes, lowers the amount of time spent watching television by 10 minutes and shortens sleep by 8.5 minutes."

(Source: John Markoff, "Internet Use Said to Cut Into TV Viewing and Socializing," The New York Times, December 30, 2004; http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/technology/30internet.html?th ; referencing "What Do Americans Do on the Internet?" Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, 3 January 2005; http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/index.html .)

"'People don't understand that time is hydraulic,' [Nie] said, meaning that time spent on the Internet is time taken away from other activities.

...The researchers acknowledged that the study data did not answer questions about whether Internet use itself strengthened or weakened social relations with one's friends and family.

'It's a bit of a two-edged sword,' Mr. Nie said. 'You can't get a hug or a kiss or a smile over the Internet.'"

(Source: Norman H. Nie, in John Markoff, "Internet Use Said to Cut Into TV Viewing and Socializing," The New York Times, December 30, 2004; http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/technology/30internet.html?th ; referencing "What Do Americans Do on the Internet?" Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, 3 January 2005; http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/index.html .)

Federal, state, and local governments have spent billions of dollars in placing computers into the nation's schoolrooms, yet according to an education professor at the University of Wisconsin, the digital revolution has actually worked greater wonders in home schooling than in public schooling.

Michael W. Apple has nothing but praise for Larry Cuban's Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom (Harvard University Press, 2002), which questions the value of the twenty-year investment in wiring, hardware, and software that is used infrequently in the traditional classroom. As Cuban puts it: "The quantities of money and time have yet to yield even modest returns or to approach what has been promised in academic achievement, creative classroom integration of technologies, and transformation of teaching and learning."

However, Apple sees a dynamic that Cuban misses: that the Internet-linked computer has yielded high dividends to parents who educate their children at home. Apple sees the computer not only providing a plethora of lesson plans and materials for parents and students, but also helping to form vital networks among home-schooling families that serve social, educational, and political purposes. No fan of the home school, Apple nonetheless understands how the computer has empowered home instruction while fueling what he fears: the dramatic growth of the home-school movement, which he says now accounts for more students than do charter public schools.

The University of Wisconsin professor marvels - although somewhat begrudgingly - at how home schooling represents, unlike the public education establishment, the same innovation, creativity, and ingenuity that the computer represents. Particularly troubling to him is how networks of home-schooling parents in California are forming themselves, with the blessing of public school authorities, into "charter" schools. He notes how in one small school district, a home charter school grew from 80 to 750 students in two years, providing both greater state revenue for the school district and a wealth of materials and instructional support for the home-based parent-teacher.

As much as Apple is troubled by what a growing home-school movement may pose to a public education system that he laments is also politicized, he ought to realize that home schooling, like the computer, is here to stay.

(Source: Michael W. Apple, "Are We Wasting Money on Computers in Schools?" Education Policy 18 [July 2004]: 513-522.)