Reading this article definitely gave me a greater insight into how much technology integration can be improved through research and development in education. It was interesting seeing the major goals of this National Education Technology Plan 2010  (NETP) and how ambitious it seems. I think reading the past articles about the digital divide and the participation gap, made me see this article by a different perspective. Learning about all the challenges facing the use of technology integration in education made me question this article a lot more about how exactly they were going to go about making their plan successful. While I had my doubts at the beginning, near the end they did a great job of summarizing everything and making it clear how they would improve education by integrating technology.

The NETP does acknowledge the many challenges and provide a solid solution. I was skeptical at first because they made it seem so simple to change things and make a profound impact on the education system. However, they made it clear that none of it is possible unless “all 50 states, the thousands of districts and schools across the country, the federal government, and other education stakeholders in the public and private sector” unite to implement the proposed solutions. I found this statement to further validate their plan and not just simply make it an unrealistic, naive goal.

I also liked how they mentioned time as an issue and how critical it is to act now. That was one of my concerns with this plan because technology is constantly changing and that creates a huge problem financially. It’s important for schools to have up-to-date technology. While I’m not necessarily saying that each school needs to have the latest devices and try to upgrade every year, I do believe that they need to be given the appropriate technology. It’s one thing to say that the schools have technology in their schools but it makes no difference if the technology they are working with is outdated. It’s going to be very difficult to have the financial resources to have all schools with adequate technological resources, therefore making the participation gap still present.

Overall, I think this is a great plan and if we don’t start making changes, when will we? We cannot let the challenges of providing appropriate technology to schools over-weigh the benefits. This leads me to ask: Out of all the goals and recommendations provided by this plan, which do you think is the most challenging to accomplish? I think it’s important for us to be aware of these challenges and constantly work to better implement technology in our classrooms.

I found this article to be rather interesting and informative. The author went straight to the point about the types of digital differences impacting learning and provided very good examples that highlighted the benefits of technology integration.

One section that got me thinking was where he talked about the Generation Gap.  It is definitely very evident today how much more students know about technology compared to the teachers. Even in some of my classes today, the professors have a hard time with technology. This happened recently in one of my classes where the professor was seriously baffled as to how to maximize a window and had to have a student assist him and show him exactly how to enlarge the screen. He is definitely a digital immigrant.

It’s also interesting to think about the generation gap and how kids are being exposed to technology at a younger age. Children are now being faced with different learning requirements. Not too long ago, my little cousin was telling me about how she had a powerpoint due for one of her classes. She is only in third grade and this very much surprised me because when I was in elementary we definitely did not learn how to use powerpoint until I was in middle school. I also don’t recall having any major project that required a computer until at least 5^th grade. We made our presentations out of magazine clip outs displayed on poster boards and it seems as if now that will become a thing of the past.

I also found the Project Fresa to be a wonderful learning experiment for the students and a commendable thing done by the teachers. This project shows just how important technology is and how it connects the world together. The students were able to have a real world learning experience, rather than just learning testing material from books.

The article also brings up the point that students will have “constant access to information, resources, and data,” while this is a major benefit, I think it can also cause a huge problem. With all that information at the tips of their fingers, students can become too reliant on technology and seize to think for themselves. Maybe for younger students not so much, but for high school students having all the information they need can lead to laziness in schoolwork and easily looking up answers online. I feel like nowadays, teens have become too attached to their computers and their social networking sites. They overlook all the resources and information that the web has to offer and don’t tend to use their computer to further stimulate their learning. I think by exposing students to the benefits of the Internet at an early age, they will more likely know how to better spend their time on it.