It was accepted as the way to do business. Staff practiced with new tools until they became second nature. I noticed that in the central offices, technologies added value to the outcomes of work for which each user was directly accountable. But in the classrooms and school building I saw that day, and in most others I have visited since, those lessons have yet to be learned. Foremost is that utility lies in the needs of the user.
Value comes first from what the tool enables people to do.
Because educators have been so busy learning to use computers so they can find out what the tool does, they have not been able to focus on the values the technologies provide to what they do. As a consequence, in many schools, computers and information technology tend to be addressed as ends rather than means. School systems have technology plans. Seldom has technology been viewed as a strategic tool for accomplishing its other plans. When technology use is perceived from a perspective that divides schools into worlds of either instruction or administration, strategic organizational values fall through the gap between them.