From researchers to rabble-rousers, a small band of high-impact players has had a powerful effect on technology in the nation's schools. Some of these men and women have done great things for education, some have set schools back. But count on this: Because of the movers and shakers you're about to meet, education technology will never be the same again.

===> POLICYMAKERS

Al Gore, vice president of the United States

Having first coined the term "information superhighway" 17 years ago, Vice President Gore is the individual most responsible for spearheading the current administration's focus on educational technology.

It was Gore's call to connect all schools to the internet that led to the controversial eRate--and led Republicans in Congress to label the program the "Gore Tax."

During his eight years as a congressman and eight more years as a senator, Gore became a nationally recognized leader in technology policy. While a member of the Senate, he introduced and steered to passage the High Performance Computing Act to create a seamless web of communications networks, computers, databases, and consumer electronics. That legislation was signed into law in 1991, creating the National Information Infrastructure (NII), of which the internet is a part.

At the Superhighway Summit in Los Angeles in 1994, Gore issued his now-famous challenge to connect every U.S. classroom to the internet by the year 2000: "I challenge all of the CEOs who are on the panel and in the audience...to make this commitment at the conclusion of your meeting, and then to challenge in turn the CEOs of every other company in your industries to accept and help us meet this goal. If you will make this commitment today, our administration will issue the same challenge to state regulators, governors, mayors, school boards, teachers, librarians...and citizens throughout this country."

Gore has played a key role in developing and supporting the administration's Educational Technology Initiative and its four pillars (computers, internet access, educational software, and teacher training) introduced in President Clinton's State of the Union Address in 1996. He also has led the administration's push for the devel opment of the Next Generation Internet--a new broadband internet for the integrated delivery of voice, video, and data--and helped usher in an era in which federal funding for school technology is at an all-time high.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OVP/html/

GORE_Home.html

Bill Janklow,

governor of South Dakota

South Dakota's plan to wire the state's schools to the internet has proceeded more quickly than even state officials had imagined. Janklow has spurred the plan on by leveraging the state's buying power to negotiate super deals with its telecommunications and cable companies.

http://www.state.sd.us/governor/governor.htm