Larry Cuban has spent much of his career studying how teachers do (or do not) employ new technologies of various kinds to change how they work with students.

In this book, he provides evidence from well equipped classrooms in the Silicon Valley that outfitting schools with networked computers does not work the kind of miracles school reformers and vendors claim.

Along with other researchers from Stanford University, Cuban follows students through their schedules, interviews them along with their teachers and builds what amounts to a disappointing portrait of school use.

He looks at three age segments: pre-school and kindergarten, high school and higher ed (Stanford).

Findings are disappointing across all three levels despite what amount to impressive expenditures.

© 2001, Jamie McKenzie, all rights reserved.

What makes Cuban's findings especially noteworthy is the fact that the two high schools and the university being studied have taken special efforts to support the use of new technologies.

These are not poorly equipped laggards. The schools are leaders in the amount of equipment purchased, the computer to student ratios and the quality of networks made available.

Cuban reports that teachers tend to transform the new technologies to conform with existing traditions of classroom practice.

"I find compelling the combined explanations of historical legacies and the contextually constrained choice of teachers in accounting for the patterns of teacher and student use in different levels of schooling."