Online teaching technologies still have three main disadvantages: cost, complexity, and negative impacts on productivity. In many areas of Canada, cost is still a major factor affecting ownership and use of computers and other new technologies. Until online teaching technologies become as simple to use as telephones and new cars, they will continue to fail to produce productivity increases. The Internet illustrates how online teaching technologies have been a mixed blessing. The Internet's potential advantages as a teaching tool stem from the fact that it is engrossing and inherently interesting, incorporates multi-sensory uses of media, provides enormous numbers of connections to other sources of information and interaction, allows everyone an individualized experience, and can both reflect and be a creation of teachers and learners. However, these same characteristics also account for some of the Internet's major weaknesses as a teaching tool. Any plan to use the Internet and other new technologies as teaching tools must begin with a quality-oriented assessment of the given technology's fitness for use as a teaching tool. Factors to consider include whether the technology is directly related to the learning outcomes of specific audiences of learners, affordable, readily accessible to local users, and durable and long-lasting. (MN)