Education in the 20th century is marked by the frustrated progressivism of figures like Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky (Farnham-Diggory, 1992). These innovators saw the need to radically change our educational system, which often placed institutional needs ahead of children's learning needs. Behaviorists like Thorndike and Skinner offered a similar critique of the status quo, though with a very different emphasis on developing more efficient, effective strategies for conveying information and skills to students.
While these theorists inspired generations of practicing teachers, the realities of the classroom inhibited innovation, forcing compromise and, in too many cases, complacency as teachers' dreams ran up against a roomful of students, each with unique needs, desires, and demands. It turns out that students' individual needs, which the theorists were trying to acknowledge and address, became the very downfall of programs which proved incapable of managing such a complex task. The resources and systems required were simply not available. Thus in the end, educational visionaries have often been viewed as ultimate failures because their prototype schools and programs were not widely replicated and diffused (Farnham-Diggory, 1992).
Technology has been promoted as an important enabling mechanism to help make these visions of education a reality. There was nothing wrong with the theories, argue technology advocates, but we lacked the means of realizing these theories in the classroom. Just as technology has achieved productivity gains in business and manufacturing, we can expect technology to help with the "work" of education. So now, if a teacher can't respond individually to thirty students at the same time, maybe a computer lesson can-providing individual feedback to keep errors private. If the school can't afford a field trip to the museum, then a video or CD-ROM can bring images and presentations to the classroom. If students need access to information, they can search the Web. In spite of certain limitations-lack of intelligence or flexibility, limits in resolution, inequitable access, etc.-technology can help make theorists' progressive visions viable and affordable.
