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Describes a project currently under way in the Pittsburgh Public Schools seeking to develop new environments for teaching and learning using the technology of wide area computer networks. The history of this project offers lessons for other school districts which might wish to develop similar resources for their own use. Extracts a set of guidelines that can be followed by these other school districts.

This paper is a case study of the ideology, strategies and process of the Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh project in its attempt at school reform in an urban school district. The paper reflects on the project’s activities, looks at its efforts from the literature of school reform, and uses its experience to develop a conceptual framework for discussing such reform efforts. The conceptual framework is based on Chaos Theory (Gleick, 1987). The objectives of this paper are to apply Chaos Theory, as developed in mathematics and science to educational organizations and present a conceptual model for school reform consistent with this theory.

Common knowledge: Pittsburgh is a school networking project which is developing network connectivity and curricular applications in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. With its emphasis on the curriculum and its efforts to institutionalize the use of networking technology, the project offers a useful model for other school districts to follow. The present paper describes how the project has expanded from its initial structure, delineates specific products that have been produced and indicates directions in which future expansion is likely to take place.

A unifying theme apparent at this year's Symposium was the need for balance when lifting the veil of bank secrecy: (1) the need to protect civil liberties versus the need to fight crime; (2) the bank's need to balance its role as policeman while furthering its commercial objectives; (3) the necessity of weighing international cooperation against the awareness that individual nations jealously guard their own legislative regime; (4) the dichotomy of technology that serves both to protect and penetrate secrecy; (5) the balance required when investigating crimes.