States are setting aside substantial amounts of money for building information infrastructures dedicated to instructional usage. Yet, as an educational technologist, I am more dismayed than delighted. Teachers and administrators who use new media are assumed to be automatically more effective than those who do not. Decades of experience with innovation has demonstrated that this viewpoint is misguided. Classroom computers that are acquired as panaceas end up as doorstops.
Information technology is a cost-effective investment only in the context of systemic reform.
I feel additional concern about attempts to supply every student with continuous access to high performance computing and communications because of the likely cost of such a massive investment. For several reasons, this is an impractical approach for improving education. First, putting all this money into computers and cables is too large an investment in just one part of the infrastructure where other improvements desperately needed. Buildings are falling apart, furnishings are dilapidated, playgrounds need repair, asbestos must be removed . Substantial funding is needed for other types of innovations required to make instructional hardware effective.