The subject of this paper is the impact of “new information technologies” (NIT), to use Gwyn’s term, on teaching as well as its likely future impact. The future is the focal point because “those of us who are teacher trainers are already training students who will teach pupils who will live to see the twenty-second century.”

After reviewing the highlights of the current impact of NIT on pedagogy, Gwyn provides a retrospective on the impact of the industrial revolution on schools and schooling and discusses the lessons we might learn from this today. He then provides a list of five possible major changes that may be wrought by NIT, a discussion of their social and pedagogic effects, and the specific areas of the development of information technologies that have “direct implications for pedagogy.” The basic point is that both NIT and pedagogy focus on information.

Gwyn continues with a discussion of pedagogical challenges brought about by NIT and related matters. He suggests that schools might become obsolete and that even their socialization function may be indirectly enhanced by NIT. He concludes with a discussion of the changes in teacher training needed to provide competence in NIT and its social impact.

The paper is neither stimulating nor does it contain much new or interesting intellectual content. I can find no subgroup of the computing community who would profit from a reading. The material is dry and often obvious, and even education professors are unlikely to wish to plod through it.