National Education Technology Plan

The National Education Technology plan is used to improve student learning through the use of 5 goals. The goals involve learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure and productivity as they pertain to technology. I have evaluated this plan through my answers to the following questions:

As you read the Introduction to the National Education Technology Plan, what did you determine to be the purpose of the National Education Technology Plan? How does it affect teachers and students, people like you and me? (feel free to be critical if you like).

The purpose of this National Educational Technology Plan, is to provide a quality education to all citizens. This plan is put in place to ensure that everyone is encouraged and able to obtain an education that they can rely on for a job. This plan seeks to develop critical thinking skills in the students by encouraging exploration and invention in students. This plan is necessary because America has seen a drop in college graduates, our schools are failing their students and in the near future, many professions will require at least a bachelors degree and there is a huge percentage of adults who lack literacy skills.

In order to accomplish these goals, it has been determined by this plan that the individual states need to change their standards of education to help its students compete in the world economy.  It also states that it should better educate teachers to provide growth in its students and better assess and track its students growth.  Under this plan, states should reward and rehire proven, successful educators and move them to the schools and areas where they need it most. Finally, states need to fix their broken schools.

As a teacher for me this means that unless my students test scores are on top, I will not be rewarded and if they are, I will be taken out of my school and placed in a school that is more desperate for quality education. It means that my worth as a teacher will be measured by standardized tests and not on an individual level.

As a parent, this means my children will be held to the same academic growth standard as students who are above their level and below it and their academic achievement will be based on a test that is taken one week during the year rather than over the course of the entire year and will only measure growth in the categories included in the test.

For administrators, this means learning to place money in the budget in the places that the government sees fit and running schools on the new standards with the hope of “turning around lowest achieving schools.”

Overall, I think this plan has a great intention. I surely see a need for a plan such as this in the school system. However, I think that this plan in particular is putting a band aid on a wound that really needs 100 stitches.

As you read the Introduction to the National Education Technology Plan (NETP), what were the main assumptions under which the plan was developed?  (you may copy and paste the main assumptions, and then answer the question below in your own words).

The plan is based on the following assumptions:

·         Many of the failings of our education system stem from our failure to engage the hearts and minds of students.

·         What students need to learn and what we know about how they learn have changed, and therefore the learning experiences we provide should change.

·         How we assess learning focuses too much on what has been learned after the fact and not enough on improving learning in the moment.

·         We miss a huge opportunity to improve our entire education system when we gather student-learning data in silos and fail to integrate the information and make it broadly available to decision-makers at all levels of our education system—individual educators, schools, districts, states, and the federal government.

·         Learning depends on effective teaching, and we need to focus on extended teams of connected educators with different roles who collaborate within schools and across time and distance and who use technology resources and tools to augment human talent.

·         Effective teaching is an outcome of preparing and continually training teachers and leaders to guide the type of learning we want in our schools.

·         Making engaging learning experiences and resources available to all learners anytime and anywhere requires state-of-the-art infrastructure, which includes technology, people, and processes that ensure continuous access.

·         Education can learn much from such industries as business and entertainment about leveraging technology to continuously improve learning outcomes while increasing the productivity of our education system at all levels.

·         Just as in health, energy, and defense, the federal government has an important role to play in funding and coordinating some of the R&D challenges associated with leveraging technology to ensure the maximum opportunity to learn.

What are some concerns administrators, educators, or even students might have with these assumptions?

I think that assumptions are never a healthy determination to make and this situation is no different. There are plenty of concerns that administrators, educators and students could and should have about this technology plan.

First, the administrators may not find the statements concerning because they are based on great premises but they may find  it concerning that they have a lot of changes to make. There is a lot of new standards and methods that they need to take into consideration with curriculum building, and how they assess their students. They also need to re-train their educators and rely on the governments input and money. They also need to move money around in their shrinking budgets to accommodate the technology standards.

Secondly,  educators need to accommodate the new government policies, undergo different evaluations, reeducate themselves and be willing and able to apply their new education to their lessons and adapt to the many changes coming their way all while continuing to help the students grow.

Lastly, the students in many ways will benefit from the assumptions that are made, in that changes need to be made and improvements in technology need to be made. I think that students will suffer in some ways though. Including, the way they will be assessed and the ways their teachers will be evaluated. Their teachers will be spread thin while trying to include their education, the changes, and meeting the needs of each student ( which doesn’t really change anything, this is the life of a  teacher).

As you read the Executive Summary, the NETP presents a model of learning powered by technology, with goals and recommendations in five essential areas. ( You may copy and paste the areas directly from the document and then answer the question below in your own words).

Goals and Recommendations

To transform education in America, we must turn ideas into action. The NETP presents five goals that address the key components of this plan—learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity—along with recommendations for states, districts, the federal government, and other stakeholders in our education system for achieving these goals.

1.0 Learning: Engage and Empower

All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and out of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society.

To meet this goal, we recommend the following:

1.1 States should continue to revise, create, and implement standards and learning objectives using technology for all content areas that reflect 21st-century expertise and the power of technology to improve learning.

Our education system relies on core sets of standards-based concepts and competencies that form the basis of what all students should know and should be able to do. Whether the domain is English language arts, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history, art, or music, states should continue to consider the integration of 21st-century competencies and expertise, such as critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, multimedia communication, and technological competencies demonstrated by professionals in various disciplines.

1.2 States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that use technology to embody design principles from the learning sciences.

Advances in learning sciences, including cognitive science, neuroscience, education, and social sciences, give us greater understanding of three connected types of human learning—factual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and motivational engagement. Technology has increased our ability to both study and enhance all three types. Today's learning environments should reflect what we have learned about how people learn and take advantage of technology to optimize learning.

1.3 States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that exploit the flexibility and power of technology to reach all learners anytime and anywhere.

The always-on nature of the Internet and mobile access devices provides our education system with the opportunity to create learning experiences that are available anytime and anywhere. When combined with design principles for personalized learning and Universal Design for Learning, these experiences also can be accessed by learners who have been marginalized in many educational settings: students from low-income communities and minorities, English language learners, students with disabilities, students who are gifted and talented, students from diverse cultures and linguistic backgrounds, and students in rural areas.

1.4 Use advances in learning sciences and technology to enhance STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning and develop, adopt, and evaluate new methodologies with the potential to inspire and enable all learners to excel in STEM.

New technologies for representing, manipulating, and communicating data, information, and ideas have changed professional practices in STEM fields and what students need to learn to be prepared for STEM professions. Technology should be used to support student interaction with STEM content in ways that promote deeper understanding of complex ideas, engage students in solving complex problems, and create new opportunities for STEM learning throughout our education system.

2.0 Assessment: Measure What Matters

Our education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement.

To meet this goal, we recommend the following actions:

2.1 States, districts, and others should design, develop, and implement assessments that give students, educators, and other stakeholders timely and actionable feedback about student learning to improve achievement and instructional practices.

Learning science and technology combined with assessment theory can provide a foundation for new and better ways to assess students in the course of learning, which is the ideal time to improve performance. This will require involving experts from all three disciplines in the process of designing, developing, and using new technology-based assessments that can increase the quality and quantity of feedback to learners.

2.2 Build the capacity of educators, education institutions, and developers to use technology to improve assessment materials and processes for both formative and summative uses.

Technology can support measuring performances that cannot be assessed with conventional testing formats, providing our education system with opportunities to design, develop, and validate new and more effective assessment materials. Building this capacity can be accelerated through knowledge exchange, collaboration, and better alignment between educators (practitioners) and experts.

2.3 Conduct research and development that explores how embedded assessment technologies, such as simulations, collaboration environments, virtual worlds, games, and cognitive tutors, can be used to engage and motivate learners while assessing complex skills.

Interactive technologies, especially games, provide immediate performance feedback so that players always know how they are doing. As a result, they are highly engaging to students and have the potential to motivate students to learn. They also enable educators to assess important competencies and aspects of thinking in contexts and through activities that students care about in everyday life. Because interactive technologies hold this promise, assessment and interactive technology experts should collaborate on research to determine ways to use them effectively for assessment.

2.4 Conduct research and development that explores how Universal Design for Learning can enable the best accommodations for all students to ensure we are assessing what we intend to measure rather than extraneous abilities a student needs to respond to the assessment task.

To be valid, an assessment must measure those qualities it is intended to measure and scores should not be influenced by extraneous factors. An assessment of science, for example, should measure understanding of science concepts and their application, not the ability to see print, to respond to items using a mouse, or to use word processing skills. Assessment and technology experts should collaborate to create assessment design tools and processes that make it possible to develop assessment systems with appropriate features (not just accommodations) so that assessments capture examinees' strengths in terms of the qualities that the assessment is intended to measure.

2.5 Revise practices, policies, and regulations to ensure privacy and information protection while enabling a model of assessment that includes ongoing gathering and sharing of data on student learning for continuous improvement.

Every parent of a student under 18 and every student 18 or over should have the right to access the student's own assessment data in the form of an electronic learning record that the student can take with them throughout his or her educational career. At the same time, appropriate safeguards, including stripping records of identifiable information and aggregating data across students, classrooms, and schools, should be used to make it possible to supply education data derived from student records to other legitimate users without compromising student privacy.

3.0 Teaching: Prepare and Connect

Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners.

To meet this goal, we recommend the following actions:

3.1 Expand opportunities for educators to have access to technology-based content, resources, and tools where and when they need them.

Today's technology enables educators to tap into resources and orchestrate expertise across a school district or university, a state, the nation, and even around the world. Educators can discuss solutions to problems and exchange information about best practices in minutes, not weeks or months. Today's educators should have access to technology-based resources that inspire them to provide more engaging and effective learning opportunities for each and every student.

3.2 Leverage social networking technologies and platforms to create communities of practice that provide career-long personal learning opportunities for educators within and across schools, preservice preparation and in-service education institutions, and professional organizations.

Social networks can be used to provide educators with career-long personal learning tools and resources that make professional learning timely and relevant as well as an ongoing activity that continually improves practice and evolves their skills over time. Online communities should enable educators to take online courses, tap into experts and best practices for just-in-time problem solving, and provide platforms and tools for educators to design and develop resources with and for their colleagues.

3.3 Use technology to provide all learners with online access to effective teaching and better learning opportunities and options especially in places where they are not otherwise available.

Many education institutions, particularly those serving the most vulnerable students and those in rural areas, lack educators with competencies in reaching students with special needs and educators with content knowledge and expertise in specialized areas, including STEM. Even in areas where effective teaching is available, students often lack options for high-quality courses in particular disciplines or opportunities for learning that prepare them for the modern world. Online learning options should be provided to enable leveraging the best teaching and make high-quality course options available to all learners.

3.4 Provide preservice and in-service educators with professional learning experiences powered by technology to increase their digital literacy and enable them to create compelling assignments for students that improve learning, assessment, and instructional practices.

Just as technology helps us engage and motivate students to learn, technology should be used in the preparation and ongoing learning of educators to engage and motivate them in what and how they teach. This will require synthesizing core principles and adopting best practices for the use of technology in preparing educators. Technology also should be an integral component of teaching methods courses and field experiences rather than treated as a discrete skill distinct from pedagogical application.

3.5 Develop a teaching force skilled in online instruction.

As online learning becomes an increasingly important part of our education system, we need to provide online and blended learning experiences that are more participatory and personalized and that embody best practices for engaging all students. This creates both the need and opportunity for educators who are skilled in instructional design and knowledgeable about emerging technologies. Crucial to filling this need while ensuring effective teaching are appropriate standards for online courses and teaching and a new way of approaching online teacher certification.

4.0 Infrastructure: Access and Enable

All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it.

To meet this goal, we recommend the following actions:

4.1 Ensure students and educators have broadband access to the Internet and adequate wireless connectivity both in and out of school.

Students and educators need adequate broadband bandwidth for accessing the Internet and technology-based learning resources. "Adequate" should be defined as the ability to use the Internet in school, on the surrounding campus, throughout the community, and at home. It should also include simultaneous use of high-bandwidth resources, such as multimedia, communication and collaboration environments, and communities. Crucial to providing such access are the broadband initiatives being individually and jointly managed by various federal agencies.

4.2 Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school.

Only with 24/7 access to the Internet via devices and technology-based software and resources can we achieve the kind of engagement, student-centered learning, and assessments that can improve learning in the ways this plan proposes. The form of these devices, software, and resources may or may not be standardized and will evolve over time. In addition, these devices may be owned by the student or family, owned by the school, or some combination of the two. The use of devices owned by students will require advances in network filtering and improved support systems.

4.3 Support the development and use of open educational resources to promote innovative and creative opportunities for all learners and accelerate the development and adoption of new open technology-based learning tools and courses.

The value of open educational resources is now recognized around the world, leading to the availability of a vast array of learning, teaching, and research resources that learners of any age can use across all content areas. Realizing this value will require new policies concerning the evaluation and selection of instructional materials so that digital resources are considered and processes are established for keeping educational resource content up to date, appropriate, and tagged according to identified content interoperability standards.

4.4 Build state and local education agency capacity for evolving an infrastructure for learning.

Building an infrastructure for learning is a far-reaching project that will demand concerted and coordinated effort. The effort should start with implementing the next generation of computing system architectures and include transitioning computer systems, software, and services from in-house datacenters to professionally managed data centers in the cloud for greater efficiency and flexibility. This will require leveraging and scaling up the human talent to build such an infrastructure, which should ultimately save money and enable education IT professionals to focus more on maintaining the local infrastructure and supporting teachers, students, and administrators.

4.5 Develop and use interoperability standards for content and student-learning data to enable collecting and sharing resources and collecting, sharing, and analyzing data to improve decision making at all levels of our education system.

Fragmented content and resources and student-learning data siloed in different proprietary platforms and systems, along with a lack of common standards for collecting and sharing data, are formidable barriers to leveraging resources for teaching and learning. These barriers exist because we lack common content interoperability standards and tools to enable use of such standards. The lack of common standards affects the quality of tools because developers limit their R&D investments into narrow markets and are not able to leverage overall market advancements in research and development. Interoperability standards are essential to resolving these issues.

4.6 Develop and use interoperability standards for financial data to enable data-driven decision making, productivity advances, and continuous improvement at all levels of our education system.

Just as content, resources, and student learning data are fragmented in disconnected technology systems and throughout our education system, the same is true for financial data. Therefore, we also need financial data interoperability standards and tools that enable the use of these standards.

5.0 Productivity: Redesign and Transform

Our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of time, money, and staff.

To meet this goal, we recommend the following actions:

5.1 Develop and adopt a common definition of productivity in education and more relevant and meaningful measures of outcomes, along with improved policies and technologies for managing costs, including those for procurement.

Education has not incorporated many of the practices other sectors regularly use to measure outcomes, manage costs, and improve productivity, a number of which are enabled or enhanced by technology. As other sectors have learned, we are unlikely to improve outcomes and productivity until we define and start measuring them. This starts with identifying what we seek to measure. It also requires identifying costs associated with components of our education system and with individual resources and activities so that the ratio of outcomes to costs can be tracked over time.

5.2 Rethink basic assumptions in our education system that inhibit leveraging technology to improve learning, starting with our current practice of organizing student and educator learning around seat time instead of the demonstration of competencies.

To realize the full potential of technology for improving performance and increasing productivity, we must remove the process and structural barriers to broad adoption. The education system must work to identify and rethink basic assumptions of the education system. Some of these include measurement of educational attainment through seat time, organization of students into age-determined groups, the structure of separate academic disciplines, the organization of learning into classes of roughly equal size, and the use of time blocks.

5.3 Develop useful metrics for the educational use of technology in states and districts.

Current data on the use of educational and information technology in our system consist of records of purchases and numbers of computers and Internet connections. Very little information on how technology is actually used to support teaching, learning, and assessment is collected and communicated systematically. Only by shifting our focus to collecting data on how and when technology is used will we be able to determine the difference it makes and use that knowledge to improve outcomes and the productivity of our education system.

5.4 Design, implement, and evaluate technology-powered programs and interventions to ensure that students progress seamlessly through our P–16 education system and emerge prepared for college and careers.

The United States has a long way to go if we are to see every student complete at least a year of higher education or postsecondary career training. Achieving this target will require dramatically reducing the number of students who leave high school without getting a diploma and/or who are unprepared for postsecondary education. A complex set of personal and academic factors underlie students' decisions to leave school or to disengage from learning, and no one strategy will prevent every separation from the education system. Collaboration between P–12 and higher education institutions and practices supported with technology are crucial to addressing the problem.

What are the “21st century competencies” - see the section titled “what and how people need to learn”- listed in the summary? How will technology support the growth of these competencies?

The 21^st century competencies include: critical thinking skills, problem solving, working together, and multimedia communication. I would agree these are all critical components of learning and must be fostered in order to be competitive in the world as we know it. Technology can be used in order to grow these skills in students by using different technologies that are used in many different professional disciplines. Not only does using “real world tools” help students by giving them new skills, they also are given inspiration and many students will likely develop an interest through these forms of technology.

As you read The State of Ohio's Educational Technology Plan's "purpose and mission" (page 6), how do you believe it aligns with the National Education Technology Plan? In which respects are the two plans perhaps not aligned?  Why?

Both the National plan and Ohio’s state plan address the need for all students to have an understanding and competency of technology in not only our country but the entire world. These plans both have the purpose of making students competitive in this economy and workforce. The state of Ohio differs from the National plan because, it seems more realistic. It outlines that it is flexible and willing to improve and change with each technology advancements. Ohio states that there are certain organizations that it will work with to better the educational technology and pledges to partner with other organizations as well.

As you read Ohio’n w s State Educational Technology Plan outlined on page 8, how do you believe this outline aligns with the "model of learning powered by technology, with goals and recommendations in five essential areas" proposed by the National Education Technology Plan?  In which areas are the two plans perhaps not aligned?  Why?

The technology plans on the national level compared with the plan at the state level ( Ohio), align in many ways concerning the 5 essential areas but also differ in some ways too. The 5 essential areas  involve learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure and productivity.  First, these plans are aligned because both have an emphasis on learning, assessment and infrastructure. I think these plans tend to be on a different time line however.