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much time is devoted to Archaeotype. The goal of any school is to prepare students for the world in which they will live. Dalton's emphasis on collaborative learning -- those little groups around a computer -- ``is perfect preparation,'' says Moretti, for a world in which most problems, whether scientific or corporate, are addressed by teams. Students often produce their papers collectively. Increasingly, projects are composed in the same multimedia format used for instruction. In addition, students are being primed for the world of the Internet by taking part in the school's own E-mail and bulletin-board system. They log onto the Dalton Network from home or at school to ``chat'' with friends, confer with teachers or join online discussions of movies and records. The most remarkable feature of the system, however, is the ``conferences'' -- discussion groups associated with certain courses. This year's most popular spins off a senior-class seminar in civil rights. Not only do all 17 students in the class participate, but twice as many outside the class have joined in. An additional hundred or so just log on to read what's been said. The exchange, moderated by the teacher, is both analytical and heated, especially on divisive topics like affirmative action. Observes Moretti: ``When children begin to take their own time outside the classroom to respond to questions that are important to them and become identified with positions within the larger community, that is a kind of personal development that wasn't possible in the old-fashioned school.'' How relevant are Dalton's experiments to all those old-fashioned schools across the country with strained budgets and less privileged kids? Very relevant, insists headmaster Dunnan. Sure, it takes serious money and expertise to create something like Archaeotype, he concedes. (Dalton received $3.7 million from real estate mogul Robert Tishman to develop technology.) ``But once something is developed, it need not be very expensive.'' To prove that point, Dalton has begun to offer its learning technology to a few public schools. The Juarez Lincoln Elementary School in Chula Vista, California, for instance, has been using Archaeotype for three years, much to the delight of its largely poor and ethnically diverse students. Ultimately, Dalton hopes to be able to bring its technology to market. Alas, sharing software alone will not bring about the education revolution. Few schools today have the computing power to run multimedia programs like those used at Dalton. Fewer still have the resources to support a complex schoolwide network (though increasingly schools can connect to existing networks). Still, anyone who has seen what technology can do for learning is convinced of its future. ``There's something inevitable about this,'' says Christina Hooper, a Distinguished Scientist at Apple Computer and an expert on educational technology. She believes it may take 10 years, or more likely 20, before the technology is widespread, but the prophets of the post-Gutenberg age in education will finally be proved right.
