The Global Education Network is a collaboration of premier post-secondary education institutions providing students with an international learning experience for employment in a global economy. The GEN association is dedicated to enhancing innovative global learning and collaborative opportunities for member institutions. Emphasis is on globally linking faculty, staff and students through semester, short-term and electronic exchanges among the member institutions. For high school students, several "cyber-schools" provide educational opportunities for students that transcend American soil. CyberSchools.NET is a global network that exists to fulfill the two-fold mission of strengthening school and global communities while developing real life experiences that teach children vital technological skills (CyberSchools NET, 1998). Students in a 5th grade classroom in Ulan Bataar, Mongolia, for example, are participating in the CyberSchools network. Several universities worldwide offer distance learning courses to high school students. Students of many different nationalities at the International School in Schenzen, PRC have no access to high school courses after the ninth grade because that is the terminal grade at the school. Previously, their parents would transfer their employment within a company to another region when a son or daughter was to enter the 10th grade or send the student to the US to live with relatives while the parent remained. Now, these students can choose to continue their high school careers "cybernetically" by accessing various distance education courses.
There are practical implications for school administrators in developing countries. The existence of instant communication is now a practical reality rather than just a theoretical possibility. Practicing administrators all over the globe possess the means to improve educational delivery systems. The implications represent a new found power, particularly potent in developing countries where gains in education can provide substantial economic gains and where access to educational opportunities provides more significant benefits than the incremental improvements in industrialized countries. Assuming that incentives do exist to integrate current technology into a developing country's educational system, there are several practical applications available to the practicing school administrator. Access to education information and best practice research is plentiful. Educators in developing countries face several challenges in access to staff development. Long distance/high cost travel, visa acquisition, and prohibitive professional journal costs present insurmountable difficulties. Technology allows these barriers to be overcome, however.
