Web-Based School Collaboration: The Promises and Problems

The introduction of digital technologies and the internet in the 1990s raised new challenges and created new opportunities for school collaboration. Moreover, the growth of social media in the 2000s has been a catalyst in the transformation of the ways in which web-based collaboration is perceived. In the context of education, in recent years, a number of educators as well as policy makers and governmental bodies appear to have embraced the potential of new technologies to facilitate school collaboration. This chapter will provide a critical overview of the issues underpinning web-based school collaboration. In particular, it will look at the manifestations of web-based school collaboration at intranational and international levels and will explore the cultural, political, and economic factors that underpin its resurgence.