Blog Posting Three:

On March 5, 2010 the U.S. Department of Education released a draft of the National Educational Technology Plan: Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology.” The Plan describes how information and communication technologies can help transform American education. It provides goals to inform state and local educational technology plans, and recommendations to inspire research, development, and innovation.

The NETP has five goals that that address learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure and productivity. In this plan, it has recommendations for states and their school districts and for the federal government to recognize problems and situations that may occur. These problems are not limited to funding and coordination of the programs involved. In learning, we must use “technology to create engaging, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for all learners that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures.” This plan urges educators to use technology and take it to the next level that will impact our students, not only teaching them the standards, but then go above and beyond that and motivate those students with the ways in which they best learn, through current modes of technology.

With current teaching methods, “technology can help us build the capacity of educators by enabling a shift to a model of connected teaching.” More than ever before students are connected to the world around them through technology. We need to encourage our educators to build on what they know students appreciate and help guide them through the process of using technology to teach these students. Teachers need to be aware of the knowledge and experience of using technology to fully engage students in and out of the classroom. We need to budget for technology, encouraged staff development for teaching staff members about technology and its uses.