Because of its characteristics, educational uses of WWW can evolve along two major axes []: use of the technology on a closed corpus of educational material, for the hypermedia and distance delivery capabilities of the web on one hand, and use of this technology on an organised structure of links for an open corpus of material that was not necessarily meant for educational use but which can be "redirected" and exploited in guided educational explorations. These two axes are not antagonistic, but can be alternatively or complementary exploited.
Long before WWW had reached wide acceptance, the Internet was being used for educational purposes, mostly via mailing lists and bulletin boards. In spite of tremendous growth, WWW is still only marginally used for teaching and learning activities, probably even more so in Europe, where very few primary or secondary schools have access to the Internet.