Blog Posting #3

The draft of the National Educational Technology Plan: Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology is a broad plan to help states, districts, and even teachers look ahead with vigor at the vision of teaching for the 21st century.
The plan begins by explaining what 21st century learning is. It is not the traditional one size fits all approach instead it is individualized, personalized, and differentiated to ensure success for all students. Students need to learn skills that will help them in life after graduation. Since many professionals use wikis, blogs, and the Internet to solve problems, as well as collaborate and communicate with other professionals, students need to be replicating these same things in school. The plan suggests that this is possible by the use of technology. The goals in the plan to create effective learning in the 21st century proposes that technology needs to be available to all students everywhere and at all times.
“Assessment” is the next piece of that the plan discusses. It suggests that assessments need to be improved, rather than assessing after students learn a new topic, assessments could be more factual if it could be done as learning is happening and throughout learning experiences. Technology can help assess complex competencies, and technology can be used to create assessments that accommodate disabilities (such as ELL learners) as well as strengths. Using the best assessment data can help drive continuous improvement in teaching and learning. One of the goals that the report suggests is that there is a need for a data to be collected together across the board-school data, state data, and national data.
The next section the plan reviews is focused more on teachers-“Improving Learning Through Connected Teaching”. The plan suggests that there should be a general place to obtain technology based content resources and online learning communities that create opportunities for teachers. This will promote teachers to become more effective and collaborative with others. The plan states there is a need to close the gap between teachers by using teachers that know and understand how to effectively teach using technology and have them share with others that are lacking the quality skills to teach technology. All institutions, the plan remarks, should work together.
The next topic discusses the challenges that the infrastructure creates. The plan implicates that there is a need for broadband to be everywhere, and students need access to their own device/computer at anytime. One goal is to have Open Educational Resources available to all which promotes pioneering, ground-breaking opportunities for all. All districts and even states need to think about infrastructure when planning for the future. The plan says that the federal government has a leadership role in building a national infrastructure for all learning.
The next segment in the plan discusses productivity and how learning can improve using technologies simultaneously with cutting and managing costs. The plan informs the reader that there is concern over where revenue will come from, but that educational stakeholders need to embrace continuous learning and improvement. One of the goals suggests managing costs can happen with the adoption of a common definition of productivity in education. Use the definition and standards to improve decision making at all levels of the education system. Another suggestion on how to increase productivity is to reorganize the traditional seat time students usually have and focus instead on demonstrating competencies in a variety of other ways.
The final piece of the plan focuses on the “Grand Challenges”. The first challenge is to develop and integrate a system that all students can use that is individualized and offered at any time anywhere. The second grand challenge is focused on creating cost effective assessments that are based off of 21st century learning. The third challenge is that there is a need to develop an approach to share all content with all students, across all states, districts, schools, and to use efficient data that can promote further learning. The last grand challenge is the have effective online learning at a low cost.
In my opinion, the plan has many ideas that excite me as a teacher. As I was reading the plan, I was imagining all my students having a computer in my third grade classroom and that is a thrill. At the same time, many of these goals are lofty, and without proper funding will not happen for a long time. For any of the goals in the plan to occur, there needs to be money. There needs to be money to teach teachers how to use the technology, because without buy in from them this goal will never happen. There needs to be money to purchase assessment data bases, online programs, and proper internet speed. There also needs to be money for upgrades to the technology and for any repairs that need to be made. The plan also discussed all students having equal access to technologies and resources, but with different districts receiving different amounts of money, the ones with the more money obviously will use it to purchase more technologies. I don’t know if there ever will be a completely even playing field, although using technology and the Internet has opened up many opportunities for disadvantaged students. I am looking forward to the future and to where this plan takes us as teachers and where it will lead our students.


U.S. Department of Education. (2010). National Educational Technology Plan: Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology. Retrieved from
http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/NETP-2010-final-report.pdf