A network of electronic mail systems connects universities throughout the United States and several foreign countries. Colleges of education link with public schools to support the student teaching process. Telecommunication tools for collaboration promise benefits for university faculty, student teachers, and cooperating teachers. Appalachian State University (ASU) is one example of an electronic community for the teacher education program founded on the piloting results of earlier studies. This account chronicles the uses of technology in the field experiences of the teacher education program. Initially, e-mail discussions were unstructured and substantiated previous studies which had found that student teachers used technology more for exchange of social and emotional support than exchange of ideas. To encourage more focused discussions via telecommunications, use of listservs were guided by faculty in the following academic year. Critical teaching concepts were targeted for development. During the first two years, cooperating teachers' participation was extremely limited. Individual training and encouragement was given by faculty to increase participation. When surveyed, the majority of the graduates of this program have noted that e-mail and word processing are the two major technological skills they obtained. The cooperating teachers indicated many more areas of technology in which they were competent. Attitudes of these preservice teachers were positive toward technology; the hindrances were listed as (1) limited funds, (2) equipment, and (3) time. With easy access to a network and a true social and instructional community for support, an environment was created for teachers, students and university faculty to grow and explore. Contains 13 references.) (AEF)