Chapter 15: Supporting Effective Technology Integration and Implementation

Schools have made significant progress regarding their implementation and integration of digital technologies compared to where they were three decades ago. That progress often has been quite slow, however. Although Apple 1 computers were donated to schools as early as 1975 (Computers in the classroom, n.d.), it was not until the mid-1980s that computers started to become something other than a novelty in teachers’ classrooms. Technology use by educators and students continued to be relatively rare through the mid-1990s until the federal Technology Literacy Challenge Fund helped schools to work toward the goal of making computers available to every student (Riley, 1996). Fostered by additional funding, investment in infrastructure, multiple national educational technology plans (United States Department of Education, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2010), and concurrent growth of the Internet and home computing use, digital technologies proliferated more quickly in U.S. schools in the beginning decades of the 21st century.