Testing virtual classroom in the school context

The development of information and communication technologies has made it possible for schools to establish inter‐institutional electronic networks to enhance the quality of education in small schools in sparsely populated countries like Finland. Along with this development, new kinds of virtual classrooms have emerged in symbiosis with conventional schools. A virtual classroom in a school context is a new, mostly uninvestigated, phenomenon. In this article we discuss some theoretical aspects of a virtual classroom in the school context. We also report results of a Finnish project which links two lower secondary school classrooms with the use of video‐conferencing.