Editor's Introduction.

Two decades ago, most honors directors and deans were not yet using email, nobody was hooked up to the Internet because it did not exist, and the NCHC conducted all of its business by mail. Those of us with computers used MSDOS and said "F9" as a synonym for "delete"; our desks were buried under heavy machines attached to a mesh of cords that kept us hogtied. The telephone (I'm talking landline) was the most important communication device on our desks at home or on campus. Our waste baskets bore heavy loads of paper messages and memos. Now we have entered the world of wikis and word clouds, of Flickr and Facebook, of Wordle, Scratch, and Clickers, where CPR stands for a strategy not of resuscitation but of Calibrated Peer Review. In addition to its intrinsic interest, this particular JNCHC Forum may be a curious artifact in the not-too-distant future, when we might look back at terms like Flickr and Wordle with the same amused nostalgia we now feel for MSDOS and the Commodore 64. My guess is that, while virtually all of us have adapted to the rapid digitalization of our scholarly, administrative, and personal lives, the classroom is another matter; it is a contested site where tradition meets innovation, happily or unhappily, with a range of attitudes from skepticism to enthusiasm. Honors programs and colleges, with their history of both innovation and one-on-one interaction between teachers and students, have a special place in the convergence of new and old pedagogies.