There are many benefits to online educational methods, primary among them is the ability to transcend location and time constraints, to reach remote learners, and connect communities of practice.

The homeschooling community as a learning community is currently at the stage of using the Internet for communicative purposes, consolidating a Web-presence to facilitate mainstreaming of the concepts of alternative education programs, and communicating to support and extend the extant community. This‘network’ is a fairly tolerant and open community with information and curriculum materials available for customizing learning, and a vast wealth of personalized ‘advice’, available through discussion lists, e-chat and online newsletters. As such, it can be seen that much of the 'administrative' and communicative nature of the experience has moved online from print sources such as directories and newsletters. Despite the fact that there is some commercialization of the process, for the most part this community is volunteer-driven, and based on shared and collaborative networks. It is strongly linked to publicly funded institutions such as libraries, museums and in many cases to the public school system. As such, this is a network that is creating social currency - if in a larger realm than the strictly local sphere.

The homeschooling network depends upon the availability of authoritative, publicly funded resources, such as those available on the portals of Libraries, Museums, Archives and other publicly funded and publicly available sites.The growth of the Internet has been facilitated by the creation of these resources, and as web-authoring tools and systems technology progress, they then facilitate the further creation and display of collections.

The communal, collaborative nature of the Internet is threatened by the urge towards information as commodity and commercialization. However, the Internet is the biggest public utility of the 21st century, as development has been publicly funded, and access is subsidized, particularly for educational purposes. Strong proponents such as library associations, university consortia, civic institutions and others can ensure that it stays public in the way museums and libraries have been maintained.

Our social capital is saved in our public institutions which have a strong Web-presence. It is possible to utilize the Internet to reach larger populations and therefore expand public support for these institutions for the future.

The Internet has a permanent place particularly within university settings and other communities of practice. The use of Internet technologies in developed countries has reached a critical mass, in that in university environments these technologies have become an expected part of the academic skill set. Hypertext and hypermedia, asynchronous and synchronous communication tools such as e-mail, list-serves, virtual chat and groupware (eg. Wiki), digital streaming audio and video and other rich media, search engines, and web development tools all facilitate web-based instruction, and scholarly (and not so scholarly) communication as a matter of course. Issues of cost, copyright, the impact on the academic process and order all remain to be addressed, as many universities move into the 'virtual' realm.

Does opting out of a local community in order to be more connected to a virtual community damage the greater social order? It appears that the Internet has allowed many knowledge building communities to build even larger bridging networks. It allows engagement in the greater global community. Programs such as the MIT technology program developing a $100 laptop for educational purposes in developing countries, strive to close the digital divide, and extend civic communities beyond national borders..

All the stakeholders in education: organizations, society, government, students and parents, as users of online technology will change and be changed by that use. It is difficult to separate the impact of technology from any process, and difficult to parse how learners are changed versus how the technology is changed to suit learners.

Society will use this tool as it does. Competing 'forces' of market capitalism and civil engagement will be played out in this sphere as they have in all others.

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