New technologies have changed teaching and learning in a number of ways—from graphing calculators to online lesson plans to virtual field trips and simulated dissections, educational technologies can help students access content in new and often exciting ways. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a single school that doesn’t have access to some kind of educational technology. According to surveys, as many as 95% of schools are connected to the Internet; even at the level of the individual classroom, connection is nearly as universal—close to 75% of classrooms in the United States have Internet access (CEO Forum, 2000). Despite this nearly ubiquitous access to computer technology, however, there is a significant gap between the presence of technology and its usage in the classroom. While some type of technology is present in nearly every classroom in the country, it is rarely used to its fullest potential (Royer, 2002). Some of this discrepancy is due to a lack of comfort with using technology for teaching and learning. Even teachers who are using technology and report a high degree of comfort with technology tend to use it in fairly rigid ways, such as searching for activities to use with students, communicating with other teachers, and word processing (Price, Cates, & Bodzin, 2002). And while students frequently do use computers in the classroom, use is often limited to information gathering and word processing rather than using multimedia tools or digital content to design and create products (Price et al., 2002). Often, learning with technology is teacher-centered rather than student-centered.

While many teachers still feel uncomfortable using technology in their teaching practice, it is also likely that teachers feel new technologies are unproven in the classroom (Royer, 2002). Though there has been a great deal of research on the efficacy of technology