"'Thou Hast Most Traitorously Corrupted the Youth of the Realm . . . Thou Hast Built a Paper-mill' (Shakespeare 2 Henry 6,) Or, The First Thing we Do is Kill All the Trees"

In the 15 years since computers started to appear on English tutors desks, their most notable effect has been to turn the trickle of paper circulating in university departments into a flood. Rather than exploiting the computer's power to turn paper-text into infinitely copyable, full-text searchable e-text, almost all users filled their rooms with dead trees. Furthermore, new technology has encouraged tutors to develop online courseware, especially websites and CD-ROMs, that merely replicate teaching material already available on paper. Only a tiny minority of such courseware exploits the new media's unique features, and all 'solves' non-existent problems in teaching English....