The belief of this article is that education is the answer for Americans. It will cause them to prosper and compete in a global market. President Obama is wanting to increase our number of college graduates and have all students graduate from high school, ready for what comes after. He believes that for us to be able to do this, we must be innovative, and work for continuous improvement . Assessing and implementing the programs that are effective so that everyone can take advantage of what works.
The National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) demands for our education system to be clear about what we are after and hold ourselves accountable by continuously monitoring ourselves. Use the assessments to collaborate on what is effective.Technology is imperative in every step of this plan. It will provide the means for our data driven system and allow for collaboration to expand on the information given us. We want to increase our productivity and our outcomes in the area of education. To do this, we need to address goals in 5 areas..
"These areas are learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity."
In the area of learning, we need to address what people are learning, as well as what and how they learn. Information is available around the clock. We need to use our digital resources to maximize our learning in areas of collaboration, and communication. Learning today is customized to the learner. We need to address the skills that each learner will need to be successful in this society. A core of standards-based competencies should be the ground work for today's learning. From their , learning should be relevant, and tailored to individual goals.
Assessment is a mandatory tool in a data-driven society. It is used to drive what is taught and learned.It provides the framework for the education system. Assessment needs to be technology driven, and relevant. It needs to measure critical thinking skills, and communication. It needs to assess application skills and problem solving abilities. All of these skills need to be measured across the curriculum. Technology based assessment allows us to continuously assess and apply that information to drive new learning, assess grades, and for accountability.
Teaching needs to become connected, not continue to remain isolated. By becoming connected, the classroom expands to a network of educators who plan, create, manage, and assess in a collaborative environment. It changes the face of professional development into a professional learning approach, and it makes a vast array of resources become readily available, where they were limited or non-existent in the past. Though technology is available for this now, educators are not comfortable enough at this time to implement this level of teaching. This will need to be worked toward, and introduced on a continuous basis to become feasible in the near future.
We also need an in-depth infrastructure that is readily accessible for all and always available. Great gains have been made in this area, and it has made a radical change in the available tools and resources available for education. They need to be available to all, all the time.
Productivity is becoming a large part of our education at this time. We need to teach more effectively for the one who is receiving the information, so that they can get more out of it with limited resources and time. We are looking at what is more a business model and applying it to our students to address their needs more effectively. The identical classrooms with large amounts of seat time is no longer feasible for effective learning.
NETP issued several suggestions to move tward making these 5 goals reality. They provided 4 to 5 suggestions per goal area to help educators and educational systems move to making this a reality.Then they provided what they called research and development. These are super-problems or Grand Challenge Problems that need to be addressed. Taken together, these actually form "the grand challenge to education which is to form an integrated , end-to-end real time systemfor managing learning outcomes and costs across our entire educational system."
Office of Educational Technology. (2010) Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology. U.s. Department of Education
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