Until we develop more collaborative learning teams willing to consider new possibilities with an open mind, horizon technologies such as hand-held assistants may remain obscured from view. Banks were happy with bankers' hours far longer than their customers. When ATMs first appeared upon the scene, many bankers shook their heads in doubt and displeasure. When a few enterprising banks started making good profits and captured market share by pushing the new technologies and more convenient hours, the others awakened and began copying their example. Today the business has been transformed.
Many teachers seem divided on the value or importance of the new educational technologies.
Some teach on as if it were 1968 and nothing much had changed. Others embrace electronic text and media as if it were a blessing. If we are basically satisfied with existing practice, there is little incentive or inclination to bother with the horizon. Early settlers of this country must have shaken their heads, too, at those who kept moving West, giving up the sanctuary of settled lands for uncertainty, danger and hardship. The promises of new technologies extend far beyond improved instruction, but an understanding of their potential requires a shift in perspective, a willingness to let go of what we have been in order to consider what we might become.