"Scholarly publication in education today is predominantly print based. Yet the emerging interactive forms of publication, made possible by the explosive commercialization and democratization of access to the Internet and the World Wide Web, have tremendous potential for changing fundamentally how education research is conceived, conducted,authored, and critically responded to by its audiences."

"The incorporation of primary audio-video data of classroom cases, interviews, and other educational artifacts in works published on-line could help to bridge the jargon gap between researchers and practitioners, linking them in a unified knowledge network. "

-Roy Pea., "New Media Communications Forums for Improving Education Research and Practice,"

Roy Pea is a cognitive scientist who works to integrate theory, research, and the design of the learning environments for science programming and multimedia computing. (online). His current research has him investigating how new systems of representation and communication may or should change the goals, content, and processes of learning and teaching. He is studying these issues through:

• students learning to program using LOGO in elementary school
  
• high school students learning geometrical optics with support of a diagram-based simulation environment and curriculum.
  
• middle school learning composing and communicating their research projects with computer-based multimedia tools
  
• high school students learning about topics in atmospheric sciences using scientific visualization tools adapted for non-technical users. (online)

In 1993 Pea became Dean of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern where he founded and chaired the Interdisciplinary Learning Sciences Ph.D. program. Prior to arriving at northwestern, pea was a senior research scientist at the Institute for Research on Learning as well as a consulting professor at Stanford.

Pea co-edits the Cambridge University Series on Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive, and Computational Perspectives with John Seely Brown. Peas own research interests include distributed intelligence and cognitive technologies, cognitive and conceptual development, network supported multimedia learning and communication, and socio-cultural foundations of complex learning.

His most recent speech from Tapped in appeared online Pea gives his views on how and why technology will certainly change the classroom as we know it:

• simulations and computer-based models have proven to be the most powerful resources for advancing and applying math and science since the origins of mathematical modeling in the Renaissance.
  
• Students’ work in problem-solving and project-based efforts like the Jasper Series at Vanderbilt enable students to show considerable improvement in math concepts and various other problem-solving skills.
  
• Learners producing and publishing knowledge
  
• teachers are the crucial link to successful technology in the classroom.

"No amount of good software and materials is going to work without substantial teacher intervention, and so the teacher is the crucial link and we've also now come to recognize how widely neglected teachers truly are in being supported to effectively appropriate and integrate for their purposes technology in relation to new teaching standards"

Pea however, realizes that there must a a certain catalyst or motivator to aid in this reform. He calls these catalysts Levers one lever is the net, this lever broadens the opportunities for teachers and for learners, another lever is new approaches to teacher professional development for the over 2 million new teachers that will be entering the work force within the next 10 years, and the third lever is a new type of assessment. Pea contends that we must assess developmental learning not merely rote learning.

Pea has not forgotten the teacher and their place in the school of the 21st century. He argues for continued support for teachers, and caution against replacing flesh with silicon. He pleads: No more computer literacy courses please!!!! He argues for teaching inquiry rather than teaching the tools.

Publications

Mirrors of Minds: Patterns of Experience in Educational Computing with K.S. Sheingold

Beyond Amplification: Using the Computer to Reorganize Mental Functioning

Changing How and What Children Learn in School with Computer-Based Technologies - Published by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Promising Practices and Organizational Challenges in Community Technology Centers

Promoting Partnerships for the Good of Education