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"The good news is that education is first on everybody's agenda. This also means that the expectations for results are enormous. Failure and low performance cannot be in our vocabularies. How can we reach the kinds of goals inherent in the technology agenda that President Clinton has laid out for us? It is one thing to say that we are going to put technology in our classrooms, that we are going to wire our classrooms to the Internet and the Information Age, that we are going to have every teacher in the United States feel comfortable and competent in using technology, that the applications of technology will cut across the curriculum, and that all of this will make a difference. But we all know that doing it has to happen at the ground level of every community where a set of common goals and a common framework pull things together from businesses, schools, and communities."
-Linda Roberts
Director, Office of Educational Technology
U.S. Department of Education
There are no longer questions about whether new technologies will be used in schools. Nearly everyone agrees—and for the most part enthusiastically—that students, teachers, and schools must have access to technology tools for teaching and learning, career preparation, improving student achievement, managing and delivering instruction, and connecting schools, families, students, and communities to strengthen communications and access to global resources.
In and of themselves, technologies almost never cause substantial change in schools. Where there has been change, a complex set of factors—along with the introduction of technologies—is planned, developed, organized, coordinated, and implemented. In other words, technology tools play key roles in this process when they are appropriately introduced, applied, and used.
Early results are promising, but it is still too soon to know the long-term direct or indirect impact of technology on student achievement, the management and delivery of instruction, and employee and family involvement in education. New research designs, procedures, strategies, and tools must be developed to meet the special needs associated with monitoring and evaluating these initiatives.
Many of technology's roles have yet to be defined, or even discovered. Currently, the major education focus for technology concerns the issues of access, use, and management of technology resources and experimentation with various technology models. What is the result? Technology is placing great demands on schools and school support services; currently most schools are having difficulty in meeting or addressing these demands.
The acquisition of technology literacy requires guidance and support services that are too costly and complex for most schools to coordinate and manage on their own. What schools need are partners to help them achieve their goals. Good partners will come from the community, business, and local, state, and national government. Business, particularly, has had a wealth of practical experience: learning about technology, using technology, and applying technology to meet its bottom-line needs. The corporate experiences described in the following case studies speak to what business can do—using technology—to strengthen employee and family involvement in education.
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[Corporate Experiences]