Students use technology in their everyday lives for play, communication, content sharing etc. This power of technology and its positioning in almost every segment of our lives is one of the central topics of the SCOLLAm project, where the area of education should not be treated as an isolated island.

Members of the project team have administered a survey on technology use in schools in Croatia with an overwhelming response from 1000 teachers from primary and secondary schools. The research results show great enthusiasm on teachers' behalf, the application of technology innovation in specific course avenues and the aspiration to use technology wherever appropriate. On the other hand, the teachers feel the lack of support in terms of professional development for the use and adaptation of innovative technologies towards their teaching needs. They declare the need for adequate and modular teaching materials, to be prepared for them on a future central level of digital content production.

The presented is not a novel concern in Croatian schools but it still does suggest we have surpassed the phase where there is a need for investing into the technology infrastructure and we are reaching the phase in which quality content and technology that can support both traditional and modern pedagogies is needed. In doing that it should not be forgotten that technology is not the final end goal and will not enhance the educational processes and learning by itself. It rather becomes a powerful tool that can (but gives no guarantee) be used to enhance education.

The leading ideas from the local research initiatives as well as from the experiences of a number of international teams exploring the use of innovative technologies in education suggest a systematic development of the approach of technology use in classrooms. Instead of a top-down approach based on the sheer investment in hi-tech equipment that may, but does not necessarily lead to enhanced education, there is a need for a bottom-up approach in which schools become the center of teacher competency building and the central place for the development of innovative way of educational technology use.

In such a setup teachers become the center of educational change implementation, and their professional development a key element of an adequate technology adoption. Therefore the SCOLLAm project is based on a design-based research methodology, in which the link between researchers seeking to validate their innovative educational designs and teachers is built. This way knowledge and innovation transfer towards the schools and teachers in a technology enhanced learning setup is accomplished, which insures practical, long-term and sensible application of technology in terms of used target pedagogies. The teachers’ skills are in that sense the key design element of the whole approach and they should adopt technologies in a critical way, by applying it in the most appropriate contexts and situations thereby triggering students' motivation and interest.