Using an Educational Consensus to Reach Educational Technology Tipping Point

In the United States, the use of educational technology is mandated by accredited teacher preparation programs and by state accrediting departments of education. Yet, the majority of teacher education faculty fail to infuse educational technology procedures into their courses at substantial levels (Mitchell, Dipetta and Kerr 2001) and teachers fail to infuse technology into their teaching (Anderson and Speck 2001). For educational technology to become firmly entrenched in our educational systems, educational technology must become a part of the culture of our schools. This paper reports the attitudes and opinions gathered from interviews, questionnaires, and classroom artifacts from two groups of practicing teachers (n=31) enrolled in a ‘teacher leader’ graduate program. This paper represents only the first phase of a census-like assessment of a much larger group of undergraduate students, graduate level teachers, information technology directors and college faculty from twelve colleges and universities.