Over the years, readers and graduate students have asked me about the work I have done on school reform and classroom technologies. I answerthose questions here but first some background.

I began doing research and writing on teacher and student uses of technology in the early 1980s when 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 became Oversold and Underused: Computers in Classrooms (2001). When Hugging the Middle: How Teachers Teach in an Era of Testing and Accountability appeared in 2009, one chapter dealt with teacher and student uses of technologies across four school districts.

Those writings on teaching and technology labeled me as a skeptic. And some comments on these books were…