I believe that if classrooms have sufficient numbers of computers available that teachers will have their students use them. Schools typically have 1 computer for every 4 students. This counts computers in labs that are booked all day long and old computers that are not connected to the internet or are so slow that they may as well not be. I have demonstrated repeatedly that using Linux and thin clients can put lots of fast, reliable computers in classrooms using equipment that schools are throwing away. No one seems to care. I think I've figured out why.

One reason that this thin client thing is easy to ignore is that it's so hard to understand. The notion that free software can almost magically convert old unusable iMacs that many schools count as computers sounds too good to be true. Everyone knows if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Perhaps I can figure out how to better explain the technology in few enough words that people won't get bored. But I don't think that's the hard part.

The problem is that most technology-promoting educators and teacher educators are not interested in using computers to let teachers do their jobs better. What the technology professors want to do is to change the very notion of what schools and teachers are. Often they try to explain why "technology integration" has not been successful (e.g. Hixon and Buckenmeyer, 2009). They explain that "teachers' core values about teaching and learning are the primary obstacles to successful technology integration" (p. 130). Meanwhile, these teachers are in classrooms that have one computer for every 5-8 kids, and a lab down the hall that might have one computer per kid that takes 10 minutes of class time to get to if they can manage to book it. Outside of schools, no one expected technology to be "integrated" when there were four people for every computer.

But again, the goal of "technology integration" is that teachers will change all of their conceptions of teaching and learning. Having students use computers as a normal part of their work&mdash& their reading, writing, research and learning&mdash&does not really count. Kixon and Buckenmeyer look at three different frameworks for looking at technology integration. In each of them, the highest level has to do with stuff like "transforming education" and having students "take initiative for [their] own learning." These are all fine goals. They're goals that people have been talking about for over nearly hundred years (e.g., Dewey, 1899 and check out that you can download a PDF of Stanford's first edition!). On one hand, I share those goals and would love for more teachers to become more student-centered and so on, but I still think that there exist teachers who have different epistemologies who nonetheless do a fine job and could and would do a better job if their students had access to computers. Why must we conflate using a tool with transforming education?