This Yearbook deals with a number of central and emerging issues relating to theory and practice in educational technology. The topics addressed in the chapters, however, are not intended to represent a complete or comprehensive cross-section of research on educational technology. Rather, this volume attempts to raise some significant questions about the field and the way it is perceived by educators in America. Thus, parts of the book deal with central cultural, social, and philosophical issues that are often ignored in discussions of the use and potential of technology in education.

I want to challenge the increasingly popular view that technology provides such power that we can use it to effectively eliminate schools altogether. This idea is so basically flawed, and so basically alien to our most central notions of what a good society is, how we should treat other persons in a democratic and civil society, and how we should educate citizens to live and work there, that we should do everything we can to defeat it.

In this chapter, the growth of educational technology over the past fifteen years is briefly surveyed, outlining both the rapid expansion of the numbers of computers and other types of equipment available in schools and classrooms and the changing expectations of educators and community leaders for what is desirable and acceptable as a minimal configuration of technology goods and services. The costs of these items, especially as a proportion of the overall school budget, are also indicated. Next, the sources of financing themselves are reviewed, with special emphasis on comparisons among state plans, approaches, formulas, and estimates of need. The third section reviews in detail a proposed state plan that addresses some of the equity and access concerns and is based on an approach some states favor—using tax incentives to encourage business and industry to give used technology hardware to schools. Finally, the issue of the recapitalization of schools as workplaces is raised and explored as both a funding problem and a social and political issue.

Educational technology's place in classroom teachers' thoughts and practices

In this chapter I review the origins of ways of thinking about technologically enhanced alternative materials in American schooling. I then examine new alternatives that have recently become available (especially computers and related technologies), and the usefulness and capabilities of these materials as "textbooks." I conclude with a look at possible futures, and the likelihood of further incorporation of electronic text materials into classrooms of the twenty-first century, given probable continuities and changes in schools.

My intent here is to probe the differences between electronic and traditional printed texts, to examine the ways teachers have and have not used those electronic forms in their classroom work, and finally to consider the implications of patterns of use and to suggest some directions for research and thought about the role of electronic text in classrooms that might be explored further. A note of caution is in order here, as well: I will use the term "electronic texts" quite broadly (more so than is usually the case by those who write of such things) to include not only the presentation of textual materials via computer (although those will be important parts of the analysis here), but also certain other means of presenting nonverbal information—film, video, and so on. I hope that by so doing, it will be possible to consider common features and problems in use that have sometimes been ignored by those who have focused on one approach alone.

A discussion of the forces leading to teacher specialization.