Media Education Publication 8 233 Towards the Recontext of the Virtual School Seppo Tella, Heikki Kynäslahti & Jukka Husu Abstract The increased use of information and communication technologies to establish virtual educational environ- ments has challenged people in the educational field to discuss what it is all about in these electronic creations called ‘virtual school’, ‘virtual classroom’, ‘virtual univer- sity’, and so on. In this article we aim to explore the Vir- tual School concept and virtuality , a phenomenon we be- lieve lies behind virtual. The school, traditionally, has been the place where teachers and students meet each other. It has been the setting where the institutional teaching/learning process takes place. We argue that it is time to move from tradi- tional schools towards more diverse and elaborated forms of schooling that we call a virtual school in this ar- ticle. This calls for considerations of both the context of present school and of the possible contexts, or re con- texts, of virtual schools. We also argue that the emer- gence of the virtual school asks for understanding the paradigmatic change within the school institution both on the practical and on the conceptual level. We believe that by examining this phenomenon we can better under- stand the virtual school and foresee its development in the future. Keywords: Virtual school; virtuality; information and communication technologies; school; teaching; learning; recontext. 1. F ROM PRACTICE TO ‘G OOD PRACTICE’