After decades of efforts to reform schools, it has become obvious to many that piecemeal reforms make little impact. The main problem is that our schools, which were once the envy of other nations, no longer serve us as well as in the past. The changes required are deep and fundamental.
Technology can be the catalyst for considering wholesale change in schooling.
Nearly everyone understands that to use technology effectively requires planning, teacher training, and technical support. Making technology the focus of the dialogue can remove the threat to established interests while providing an occasion to reconsider all of the ways that schools do their work. Our purpose should not be to see how much technology we can pack into classrooms. The principal advantage for adopting technology in schools is that it can provide the spark for reenergizing teachers, for prompting educators to envision new ways to teach, and for creating the kinds of schools needed now. A commitment to make schools more interesting and challenging institutions for learning, where students take greater responsibility for their own education, and where instruction is more interactive, more collaborative, and more closely tied to authentic life experience than is currently the rule.