Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

          The National Educational Technology Plan to transform American education through technology-powered learning fosters the cross-cultural collaboration needed to solve today’s challenging and rapidly growing global problems. It advocates a need for a strategic and coherent change in our regulations, policies, actions, and investments. The NETP calls for an immediate reform of the American educational system to improve learning outcomes and provide workable, cost-effective, and efficient programs and projects, accessible to every person in every school. To address these concerns, the NEPT presented a model of 21st century learning. This plan, powered by technology, addresses five challenging goals and recommends several actions the stakeholders (including district, state, and federal government) could implement in order to meet each of one of these five goals.
          First, all learners must have engaging learning activities that empower and prepare them to be active, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our global society. All content areas must contain integrated 21st century competencies, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and multi-media communication. These learners need real-world web-tools, preparing them to be productive, global members of a competitive workforce. Secondly, educators at all levels will need to develop new and better ways to measure what is important. For use in academic improvement and achievement, technology-based assessment data must be readily available to the correct people at the correct time. Educators also need support and training to help them manage the assessment process, analyze the data, and take the right action. The next technology goal will support individual educators and teams of educators by providing a connection to data, content, and resources, enabling and inspiring more effective learning for all students. In addition, students and educators at every level of our educational system will have the ability to access a comprehensive infrastructure for learning, whenever and wherever they need it. Finally, we must rethink basic assumptions, which currently guide our educational system. We must restructure our processes and redesign our structures, to make sure we use technology efficiently, making the most of our time, money, and staff. We must plan, manage, monitor, and report our spending to our decision-makers, so they will have an accurate view our financial performance. This visibility is essential to meeting all of the needs outlined in the National Educational Technology Plan.
          Yet, the NETP does not stop with the implementation of these five goals; it also introduces “grand challenge problems” to our scientists and researchers. The ultimate outcome is to establish an all level, integrated, real-time system for managing learning experiences and their costs across the entire educational system. I believe our educational system can achieve this radical transformation to bring learning into the 21sr century. The focus must be on prompt implementation, continuous evaluation, and improved outcomes.