As the opening quotation of this chapter from Einstein maintains, concern for humans and their fate is the penultimate concern in technological innovation. In the broadest sense, we frame the application of online learning environments to science in this book as tied to that central objective. Building science capacity through the use of ICT to augment education options for and to increase the capacity of people throughout the world, particularly those in isolated areas or circumstances, is a worthy goal, one to be embraced by both governments and agencies with the resources to help those governments.

The agencies and, increasingly, the governments, consider science education a key to capacity building and development, and those discussed—as well as others not mentioned, but at a similar developmental level—are well positioned to take advantage of emerging technologies that impact best practices in distance science education. As will be discussed in later chapters, there are those who question the verity of this position, and who consider science capacity a neutral element, at best. Moreover, the very definition of science and its importance to a large segment of the world’s populace is considered by critics to be debatable. However, we maintain that only those countries with the most highly sophisticated science capacity have both the time and freedom to concern themselves with innovations in science education, and the results, as later chapters explain, are of varying quality. To those in need, the philosophical debate on the purpose of science education is, rightly, merely specious.