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Ubiquitous access to digital technologies is becoming an integral part of our business, home, and leisure environments, yet despite a quarter century of educational technology initiatives, ubiquitous computing remains conspicuously absent from our schools. In this chapter, we argue that simply putting more computers in schools will not solve the problem, but rather that teaching, learning, and technology integration need to be reconceptualized within a ubiquitous computing framework before the full educational possibilities inherent in digital technologies can be realized. Using examples from our laboratory classroom, we discuss how teaching needs to be reconceived more as “conducting” than “instructing”; how learning needs to become more the responsibility of the student, and located with her in an expanded space and time that extends beyond the classroom; and how technology integration needs to be understood not as an add-on, device-driven enterprise, but one motivated by teaching and learning needs and in which multiple technology choices are readily available to teachers and students both within and beyond the classroom.

Asynchronous communication technologies (ACT), such as email, listservs, and online discussions, have been slow to catch on in K-12 classrooms. Not coincidentally, these are potentially the most transformative of all technologies and the ones most difficult to integrate into a traditional classroom. Teacher training, technical support, and access do not really explain this glaring exclusion. The theoretical standpoint of social informatics– or the ecology of technology and social systems– gives us a productive way of understanding technology's impact– or lack thereof – in school settings. More specifically, the individual/organizational, institutional, national, and societal contexts impede or propel technological integration in any given setting. In light of these contexts, one teacher's successful integration practices are examined. While teachers can effect change in their own classrooms, only administrators can truly effect systemic change, ironically working from the grass-roots up, as one district success story illustrates.

Today, public schools are under considerable pressure to integrate computer technology into their instructional programs. Results from studies of computer technology usage in public education and its impact on student achievement have not been very promising. Yet, schools are expected to purchase more computers and to incorporate them into classroom instruction. This paper examines several theories of leadership and decision making related to technology integration in primary and secondary schools and their impacts on public education. Finally, a number of leadership strategies for public school superintendents to better integrate computer technology in the instructional programs of public schools are presented.

Spurred on by the global economy and greater public interests, technology is no longer a luxury reserved for or exclusively used in wealthy schools. Indeed, educational leaders now experience strong pressure to increase and improve the use of the technology in their schools. Utilizing current research, program models, and best practices, this chapter provides educational administrators with issues associated with the costs of school technology plans, instructional, management, and other topics to address in planning to add or change the use of technology in schools, and a list of basic tenets to assist in creating and operating school technology programs.