by Linda Cox
many teachers to seek to expand their own knowledge, experience, skills, and teaching practices
while for others, it has proved to be a time of great frustration. Whether of not teachers are to
blame for the lack of use of technology in their own classrooms, or whether the blame for this
blatant lack of use should be placed on the shoulders of others, is not important or relevant. What
is important is the understanding that the use of technology will not, in and of itself, make
teachers teach better or students learn better, nor does the use of technology in daily lesson plans
raise test scores. Technology is a tool that can provide teachers and students with greater access
to more in-depth information as well as helping students learn how to solve problems, and provide
some basic skills that will need to be expanded on after high school if students choose to use them
to compete for jobs that require tech skills. However, even though technology is a tool, Larry
Cuban, author of the book, Oversold & Underused, has found that teachers don't not make regular
use of the technology available to them. Cuban states that "Across the country, most teachers and
their students are nonusers or occasional-to-rare users of these machines in classrooms" (Cuban,
2002, p. 71). This has been cause for concern for administrators, parents, and corporate executives
across the country and thus provides a platform for the reform measures that have swept across
school districts the last few years. Cuban states in the introduction to his book, Oversold &
Underused, that,
School reform again, again, and again. If any aspect of schooling in the
past two centuries has escaped the reformers' passion for improvement,
I have not found it. From ineffective teaching to unhealthy lunches, from
insufficient parental involvement to inadequate science curricula, from
mixing grade levels in classrooms to building schools without walls--no
aspect of schooling has evaded the reformers' scrutiny. (Cuban, 2002, p. 1)
Reformers have always been present in society and these "well-meaning" individuals who dream of
changing the world and making it a better place. However, the question remains as to whether
reform measures in education that are supposed to solve problems really do what they were
designed to do. There are so many factors involved that it is difficult to know if reform is good or
not so good. There is little doubt, however, that in education, many new reform measures follow a
long period of "finger pointing" and accusations levelled against teachers by government, news
media, and the general public and there is little evidence that teachers are invited to the discussion
table to help find solutions to the problems.