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. Lost is technology's value as an enabler for the changed roles and relationships that are the connecting points of restructured or reinvented schools. Without that, technology for classrooms tends to be seen as a separate cost ele- ment rather than as part of an investment in total educational results. If we truly believe in the empowering potentials of technology for both students and educators, then, as in the restroom, we must understand how technology's power lies in it contribution to the real-time work both must do.