Being Skeptical of Classroom Technology

Over the years, readers and students have asked me about the work I have done on school reform and especially new classroom technologies. I answer some of those questions in this post. But first some background. I began doing research and writing on teacher and student uses of technology in the early 1980s when the first personal computers appeared in classrooms. That writing turned into Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology since 1920 (1986). I then began working on a larger study of teacher and student uses of new technologies in preschool and kindergarten, high schools, and universities. That study became Oversold and Underused: Computers in Classrooms (2001). In Hugging the Middle: How Teachers Teach in an Era of Testing and Accountability (2009), I devoted one chapter to teacher and student uses of technologies across four school districtsin the San Francisco Bay area In The Flight of the Butterfly and the Path of the Bullet (2018), I described 40-plus teachers…