Imagine a living narrative -- an evolving story told with words, moving images, and sounds. This book portrays young people's thinking attitudes in computer-based learning environments, and it describes how the practice of ethnography is changing using networked media. I liken this form of interaction to a double helix, where learning and ethnography are intertwined to tell an emergent story about partnerships with technology.

I invite you to partake in this journey through my descriptions of videotaping two school computer cultures by using both this book and the website site. The two schools described are not only separated by geography -- one being on the east coast, in New England, and the other on the west coast, in British Columbia on Vancouver Island; they are also separated in many other ways. Hennigan Elementary School is an ethnically diverse Boston inner-city school which has struggled for decades to provide students with equal opportunities for success in an often unfair social system. Bayside Middle School is a rural, predominantly White, middle-class, well-endowed school surrounded by grass, trees, and a mild climate, located in Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island. The two places seem as opposite to each other as is possible while still being called schools. Yet, they are joined by a strong thread‹a change in their respective cultures with the advent of intensive computer-use on the part of their students. Both school communities have watched their young people gain literacy and competence in constructing computer representations of classroom projects. Not only have their tools changed from pen to computer, video camera, multimedia, and the Internet, but their way of thinking about themselves as learners has also changed. Learners now see themselves in the director's chair as they piece together new connections between diverse and often unpredictable worlds of knowledge.

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This book and accompanying website were constructed not only to provide answers, but also, to ask questions not yet asked about the connection among epistemology -- the nature of thinking, ethnography -- a method of understanding ourselves and others in shared events, and digital media. I conducted my research as a participating member with the time to engage in observations and conversations over a period of almost three years in each school. Infused in these studies are video techniques and digital tools designed with the assistance of graduate students and technical staff. My goal was, and still is, to bring to readers a sense of "being with" me in my journey as a digital ethnographer.