National Education Technology Plan
Response to the draft released on March 5, 2010
Provided by Julie Evans, Project Tomorrow CEO
I believe that the plan presents a very comprehensive and thoughtful assessment of the current state of the use of technology within teaching and learning, and provides some long overdue recommendations on how to effectively improve this situation so that all students can benefit from the potential of technology enhanced learning opportunities.
For the past 7 years, the Speak Up surveys have provided a unique window into classrooms and homes all across America and given us a realistic view on how technology is currently being used (or not) to drive student achievement, teacher effectiveness and overall educational productivity. Most notably, the Speak Up data first documented and continues to reveal each year the increasingly significant digital disconnect between the values and aspirations of our nation’s students about how technology use can improve learning, and the values and aspirations of their teachers. Students, regardless of community demographics, socio-economic backgrounds, gender and grade, tell us year after year that the lack of sophisticated use of emerging technology tools in school is, in fact, holding back their education and disengaging them from the learning process. The plan accurately sums up that hard realization that today’s classroom environment for most students does not mirror they way they are living their lives outside of school or what they need to be prepared for future jobs, and that this disconnect is actually creating a relevancy crisis in American education. Additionally, the plan also accurately describes the need for teachers to come up to speed on the technology tools (most notably the integration of these tools into instruction), the need for a new kind of school and district leadership to drive innovation, and need to leverage emerging tools (what we know today and what will be invented tomorrow) to ensure that all students are well prepared for to participate and compete in the future economy.
What I think is most significant in the plan is the sense of urgency to act now, and to adopt a new philosophy of continuous improvement recognizing that while we may not have all the “ducks in a row” right now, we can no longer afford to wait until the stars are aligned to enact transformative policies and programs. For the past few years, the Speak Up data has revealed that increasingly our nation’s K-12 students are taking responsibility for their own learning, defining their own education path through alternative sources, and feeling not just a right but a responsibility for creating personalized learning experiences. This “Free Agent Learner” is not a future profile – this the profile of our current students who no longer believe that the schoolhouse (or the teacher) is the bastion of all knowledge and are already leveraging a wide range of learning resources, tools, applications, outside experts and each other to create a personalized learning experience that may or may not include what is happening in the classroom. While the plan talks about a need to apply technology to implement personalized learning, it should be noted that our students are already doing this, and this called-for urgency is really about the rest of us catching up to the students. In our fall 2009 Speak Up surveys, 300,000 K-12 students told us about the kinds of technology based learning experiences that they were having outside of school, not directed by a teacher or part of a class assignment or homework. Those activities, self-directed by the students themselves in their quest to define their own personalized learning, included seeking out other students for collaborations, information sharing and tutoring via Facebook, taking online assessments and tests to evaluate their own learning process and knowledge on a particular topic, using cellphone applications for self-organization and increased productivity, taking online classes not for a grade but to learn more about subject that interests them, accessing podcasts and videos to help in classes they are struggling in, and finding experts (including other students) to connect with online to exchange ideas. These students are not waiting for our schools to provide the tools or applications (or even for a national plan to call for such action) to do this; they are instead taking their educational destiny into their own hands and adapting the tools that they have to prepare themselves for the future.
We asked the students in the Speak Up survey this past fall what they would like to tell our national leaders about the importance of using new technologies for learning. Their responses echo many of the same themes we see in the national plan. Here are just a few samples that underscore the need for our nation to pay heed today to the urgency called for in the plan:
We are living in a technological revolution, yet all of the schools in the United States are stuck in the eighties. We need to be able to learn through technology not have our school avoid using it or punish kids when they do use it. (10th grade boy from Arizona)
We are in a generation consumed by technology. Paired with passion and interactiveness, it can become the catalyst in the learning environment for the children of today. (12th grade girl, California)
Hello DOE! We need to have technology in our classes to keep interested. These can help us in the future more then whiteboards and can easily show us tools to find answers. There should also be a rule that all students and faculty need a Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter profile to help with homework. Then we can discuss homework help. We also could have webcams and cameras to have after school help with teachers. (7th grade boy from Colorado)
Our generation is very tech savvy and I feel that since it’s what we grew up with, that we are more comfortable and it would make learning easier. I also feel that if we allowed more technology such as laptops at school that kids would try harder and be more motivated to learn. (8th grade girl, Alabama)
We are the future. Technology is the future. Therefore, we are technology. (12 grade boy from Texas)
Over the past 7 years, over 1.5 million K-12 students (and over 300,000 parents, teachers and have shared their ideas with us about learning in the 21st century and how technology engages, enables and empowers them for learning in new and unprecedented ways. What we have learned from the students’ ideas has informed many federal, state and local programs and policies for education including this new National Education Technology Plan since we shared data with many of the advisory groups. The most significant takeaway however from the Speak Up experience has been that our students have very insightful and thoughtful ideas about their own education, and desperately want to be involved in education decisions that impact their future lives. In fact, 82% of students in grades 6-12 want to have a larger voice in school decisions through surveys like Speak Up, advisory groups, wiki discussions or class discussions. With so many students feeling disengaged from school and the relevancy crisis that exists in current learning approaches, it seems quite clear to us that having students at the table in these discussions, especially around the use of technology, not only will help us all understand how to leverage these tools more effectively but it will also provide a new pathway for keeping students in school and creating new more personalized learning paradigms that directly addresses the specific needs of today’s students. On behalf, of our nation’s students, I would therefore respectfully recommend the inclusion of an additional recommendation to the national plan that cuts across the five pillars of learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure and productivity: Listen to and incorporate the ideas of our students into national, state and local plans for transforming American education.
