Now for an old guy moment.
It is sometimes helpful to place present experiences in some type of context and understand the issues and values that shape current policy. You may be aware of the effort to generate a National Technology Plan. As a contribution to this planning effort, scholars from the Education Development Center Center for Children and Technology were asked to shape a A retrospective on 20 years of technology policy. An overview of some of their observations was reported at NECC. The report traces the evolution of present policy through various initiatives back to “A Nation At Risk.” Whatever their professional or political views, it appeared that the authors were quite careful to avoid being judgemental. However, the presenter was quite clear that reactions to the issues outlined in the document should be examined with an awareness of the value systems driving change. (My translation – we had to write as we did because we were paid to do so. We encourage you to take this document as a starting point and be as judgmental as you feel is necessary to accomplish something you feel is meaningful.)
By the way, the list of “influential position papers/reports” provided in this retrospective may be helpful to some (note to edtech graduate students outlining the intro for thesis or dissertation).
Seems to me, we are going in circles and my personal historical context places us back at the point at which we thought meeting individual needs through ILS applications that personalized drill activities was cool.
