The Department of Education has released the “National Educational Technology Plan” According to the Chronicle of Higher Education. “To achieve these goals, the National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) calls for revolutionary transformation rather than evolutionary tinkering. It urges our education system at all levels to:
• Be clear about the outcomes we seek.
• Collaborate to redesign structures and processes for effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility.
• Continually monitor and measure our performance.
• Hold ourselves accountable for progress and results every step of the way.
“Just as technology is at the core of virtually every aspect of our daily lives and work, we must leverage it to provide engaging and powerful learning experiences, content, and resources and assessments that measure student achievement in more complete, authentic, and meaningful ways. Technology-based learning and assessment systems will be pivotal in improving student learning and generating data that can be used to continuously improve the education system at all levels. Technology will help us execute collaborative teaching strategies combined with professional learning that better prepare and enhance educators’ competencies and expertise over the course of their careers. To shorten our learning curve, we can learn from other kinds of enterprises that have used technology to improve outcomes while increasing productivity.”
[from Linda Coughlin in "The Academic Ear"]
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8 comments:
This report raises several questions, some of them disturbing. I'm no technophobe, but I think it's best to take a cautious approach to adopting new gizmos for teaching and learning, adopting them slowly and selectively after we figure out what they do, and what they may undo. Caution seems especially advisable given the zero-sum nature of our educational resources these days...
I will heartily agree with you Matt. Based on the content of our discussion on Tuesday, process seems to be an important part of your educational philosophy. I am inclined to agree with you on its importance.
A lot of technology certainly falls under the category of "work-saving." But if its the work that we use to learn, of what use is the technology?
Should words like "efficiency," "performance," and "progress" be the focus of a statement that is talking about shaping human beings?
Well, if our conception of what we are shaping human beings for is sufficiently constrained -- in this case apparently to be productive workers in a modern industrial economy -- then efficiency would be just the thing. We could charitably give both performance and progress more expansive senses...
..."in this case apparently to be productive workers in a modern industrial economy..."
Exactly. I think I disagree with this premise, upon which many national education programs seemed to be based. Would like to discuss this further so as to refine my thinking.
Productivity, efficiency, performance -- words from the economist's toolkit, not the philosopher's.
David has a good point. So should the economy be the driving force behind education?
I think not, but that's just a pre-critical intuition. When we have a firm handle on what learning is, perhaps we can say something about what it's for.
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