It should enable teachers and administrators to explain to parents and the community what they are trying to accomplish with technology, and provide a set of explicit guideposts for assessing the school's progress. In drawing up a plan, don't be so captivated by the grandeur of the educational vision that you neglect the more pedestrian guideposts. It's those guideposts that enable the school to move forward, step by step, toward the realization of the vision. All schools have teachers who are enraptured with the Internet and skilled in searching it for instructionally relevant information and lesson plans. But for instructional technology to move beyond these ardent advocates, schools need to build a culture of technology use.
Cultural pressures are subtle but powerful.
The challenge for educators is not just to restructure the curriculum to integrate technology but to reculture the school so that technology use is a given. Although principals cannot do this alone, they can foster new cultural expectations in various ways. For example, faculty meetings can showcase ways that teachers are using technology. E-mail can replace memos. Teachers can be given release time to visit technology-using teachers or to attend professional meetings and conferences.