It is evident that individual lecturers have to use technology in delivering course materials in the teachers colleges. However, to effectively integrate "technology" into teacher education, lecturers must consider several major issues, such as justification, and long and short-term plans, as well as purchasing safety, and equipment accommodation. This paper presents several issues to be considered in the process of integrating technology into the curriculum of the teachers colleges. Attempts are also made to alleviate fears associated with using technology in the classroom

Teachers are vulnerable to the technopositivist ideology that perpetuates a naïve faith in the "promises'' of technology. Most teachers have been denied opportunities to explore the motives, power, rewards and sanctions associated with the unscrupulous marketing of information and communications technology (ICT) and tend to be uninformed about the research that has failed to find a positive relationship between ICT use and student achievement.

Nothing in the universe grows or develops alone. We learn I V together.... We live in a participatory universe" (Zahar 1997, 68, quoted in Vella 2002). This is a truth that we honour each time we move into a collaborative relationship, that is, a relationship based on individuals working together to achieve desired results. And as our educational practices increasingly address the whole person and position learning in terms of the cognitive, the affective, and the psychomotor, the need for collaboration among all major stakeholders in the field becomes greater.

In summer 2001 I was invited to be one of the online presenters for the course Human Resource Management in Education, a prerequisite in the University of the West Indies (UWI) Master's in Education programme. Having had both training and experience in human resource management, and done my doctoral studies in instructional systems, I had the requisite instructional design skills. However, I had never before experienced a virtual classroom environment—and the course was to be taught online with no face-to-face contact. I was not sure what to expect...either for me or the students.

Teaching, like life, is a movement of praxis, a critical balance between moments of action and moments of reflection. The participation in and theoreticization of life, particularly the life of the classroom, is the moment at which I take up this paper. In general, the following pages reveal, reflect upon, and problematize actions I have taken as teacher and offer possibilities for a more critical, caring, and constructive course of action in the future.

From the outset, both the orientation and biases in this presentation will be made explicit. First, this paper is presented from the perspective of personal knowledge gathered during my engagement with teacher education for over 30 years, and from involvement in efforts over the past 20 years to apply information and communication technology (ICT) to different aspects of teacher education in Jamaica and the Caribbean. It is presented, not from the perspective of the textbook, but from the lessons learned from actual experiences, some of them painful and highly frustrating.

There's a nat'ral mystic blowing through the air. If you listen carefully now, you will hear” (Marley 1977). These words are from Bob Marley's song, Natural Mystic. A search of the Internet of just the name Bob Marley using Google.com yields approximately 814,000 hits. This illustrates that even though Jamaica may not play a pivotal role in the digital revolution, its spirit is alive and well on the global internet. The challenge is to harness this spirit and transform it in ways that will benefit Jamaica.

The articles in this book were first presented as papers at EduVision 1 2003, an international conference on teacher education and technology. The conference, which took place in Montego Bay, Jamaica, was hosted by the Institute of Education, University of the West Indies; the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture; and the Jamaica Teachers Association and was a visible manifestation of a partnership that had long existed.

In its Five-Year Development Plan, 1990–1995, the Government of Jamaica proclaimed its belief in "education as a desired end of society" and in the right of all individuals to education and training opportunities in order to develop their innate creative and intellectual capabilities". It formally and decisively acknowledged “the vital role of education as a tool for social change and stability".