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that the schools have technology in their schools but it makes no difference if the technology they are working with is outdated.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 agree with you when you wrote about time being an issue. I also agree that technology is constantly and will continue to change in the years to come. While some schools each year are con suing the latest technology for their students, other schools wait 2 years or maybe more to get their technology updated. Therefore, their students are learning and using outdated technology. If schools don’t update their technology annually, students with the updated technology will be more experienced with the updated technology rather then the student with less experience using the outdated technology. The reason for some schools not being able to provide their students with new technologies is their financial stance and resources.
I agree that the educational aspirations of the Obama Administration are farfetched goals. In agreement with your skepticism towards the plan, I think the infrastructure proposal addresses technological inequity among the financial classes the most. The wealthiest 50% of our country have a considerably smaller hurdle to jump when it comes to access to technology and college. To even make a dent in the Obama Administration goals for education this digital inequality must be repaired. “An essential component of the learning model is a comprehensive infrastructure for learning that provides every student, educator, and level of our education system with the resources they need when and where they are needed.” To answer your question, I think it is now or never as far as getting the educational ball rolling, and although the article is vague at times, we have to start somewhere and this is at least a proposed plan of sorts.