National Educational Technology Plan
A final resource that might potentially offer guidance for how technology should be used in K-12 settings is the National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) (Office of Educational Technology, 2010). The Secretary of Education is directed by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to maintain and distribute a long-range technology plan explaining how the Department of Education will:
A) improve academic achievement through the application of present and emerging technologies,
B) increase access to technology especially for low-income students, and
C) use technology to assist students in systemic reform strategies.
The 2010 plan seems more ambitious and offers comment on topics such as 21st century skills and the role of education as an essential input to the economic success of this country. In fact, what elsewhere might be described as 21st century skills are expanded within the plan to include technology-based proficiencies such as multimedia communication and the use of technology tools as they might be used in the work place. It was unfashionable for a while to argue that learning to use technology itself was a priority, but here this is not the case as technology is argued to be the way many professionals do their work. The plan is very reform oriented arguing the need for “revolutionary transformation rather than evolutionary tinkering.”
Technology is argued to be an essential component of this change:
- no matter what the subject matter,
- inside and outside of the school itself,
- as a tool to support learning, assessment, and individualization of student learning, and
- as a way to improve efficiency counteracting present economic challenges to the funding of education.
We find the recommendations quite consistent with core ideas that guide the resources we offer you here and we will follow these initial observations with some specific examples. We also must admit to being somewhat skeptical in what seem to be inconsistencies between present government practices or priorities and NETP suggestions. For example, the present focus on high stakes testing seems inconsistent with the NETP’s criticism of the limitations of multiple choice testing in arguing the role technology might offer in providing a way to assess learning more broadly and also more immediately to allow efficient adjustment in learning experiences. Educators are already aware of the importance of high stakes testing in shaping policy and may perceive the focus in the Technology Plan as providing mixed messages. The same might be said of the focus on higher order thinking skills. Emphasizing skills that educators do not perceive as being evaluated by the tests their students take and that largely determine how student and educator performance is evaluated may not be as persuasive as it should be.
Economic efficiency represents a similar challenge. The concept of carefully tracking student progress to identify specific problems before they limit later learning and result in motivational problems makes sense. Remedial instruction, disengaged students, and attempting to deal with high drop out rates are clearly expensive to address. However, scalable examples of addressing individual needs are more concept than reality. Most of us, no matter how strongly we endorse technology, still see the teacher as essential to learning. Individualized experiences still need to be guided and supported meaning that the cost of skilled professionals will unlikely diminish.
The comment in NETP that notes that student achievement fails to advance despite consistently higher and higher costs for public education fails to note that we expect our educational system to do more and more for an increasingly diverse population of learners. We mandate that the needs of learners with special needs be met. We mandate that we educate a steady stream of immigrants who cannot speak the typical language of instruction. These are our values and these values are commendable. Likewise, meeting the individual needs of all students will come at a cost. All we can say in response is that quality is expensive. Parents of means understand this and make the investment. The core question is whether we have the collective will to extend similar opportunities to all learners. We certainly do not mean to attack the substance of the NETP. Such documents provide a starting point for discussion and debate. These seem to be turbulent times and education is not immune to scrutiny and accusations of inefficiencies. You or we may not agree with all of the proposals or the rationale, but we feel it is important to be informed and then become a participant in the process.
The National Educational Technology plan was refreshed in 2016 (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). A look at what was called the "road ahead" prioritezed issues in need of additional attention and new opportunities.
Specific areas in need of improvement include:
- attention to the digital divide specifically as it now seems to differentiate in how students use technology (active and creative ways to support learning in contrast to the use of technology to support passive content consumption).
- support for student learning outside of the school setting
- teacher preparation and professional development
- attention to the development of non-cognitive goals such as enhancing student motivation, and
- issues of data privacy.
New opportunities include:
- technology to personalize learning (the focus here is on allowing student choice in demonstrating competency),
- greater use of authentic problems and project-based learning,
- connection with out-of-school settings (e.g., museums, libraries), and
- personal interest projects.
Overlap with themes
The National Educational Technology Plan emphasizes many concepts we have already noted as themes. We highlight some of these commonalities below.
1. Technology Integrated into content-area instruction - The NETP specifically argues that learning with technology is appropriate to all content areas and also a meaningful way to facilitate the acquisition of higher order thinking skills the development of which the report suggests should be part of the instructional responsibilities of all educators.
2. Student-Centered Learning Opportunities (Active role for student / Facilitative role for teacher / Project based learning opportunities) - The NETP recognizes the value of student-centered learning experiences and proposes that educators must be more than “information experts” - they must be collaborators in learning seeking alongside their students. Project based learning is identified as a strategy that can be used to offer real world relevance. The NETP document contains numerous examples describing students learning with technology that would qualify as project based learning.
3. Learning through authentic tasks - We have proposed that authentic tasks can be identified as tasks that mimic the behavior of those who would be regarded as practitioners. When asking when it is worth becoming familiar with a technology tool, a similar case might be made by asking what tools practitioners might use in performing authentic tasks. Thus, we will try to make the case that students should occasionally have the opportunity to engage in the tasks and use the tools of practitioners. The NETP makes specific mention of practitioners using tools and techniques appropriate to the classroom (blogs, wikis, gps-enabled geotagging, primary source documents in the interpretation of history, data visualization tools in the sciences, etc.).
4. Standards and Performance-Based Assessment - The following segment from the NETP nicely clarifies the relationship between targeted goals (e.g., standards) and activities at the local level.
In contrast to traditional classroom instruction, this requires that we put students at the center and empower them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on several dimensions. A core set of standards-based concepts and competencies should form the basis of what all students should learn, but beyond that students and educators should have options for engaging in learning: large groups, small groups, and work tailored to individual goals, needs, interests, and prior experience of each learner. (P. 4) The NETP makes specific reference to ISTE standards when it comes to the identification of standards educators should examine to guide learning with technology.
The NETP devotes a great deal of attention to assessment, to the connections between assessment and instruction, and to the need for reform in assessment practices. The document contends that multiple-choice examinations do not measure all of the essential skills that need to be emphasized and are not used to adapt instruction in a timely fashion. This focus on the use of assessment to guide adjustments in learning experiences and how technology might play a key role in the assessment process and the resulting differentiation of instruction offers a very different perspective on assessment than the image many educators focus on in an era of high stakes tests. To us, it seems that the tools for implementing such changes are not as well developed as those for other roles technology might play, but the emphasis on using assessment to make more immediate adjustments in instruction seems productive.
Office of Educational Technology United States Department of Education (2010). National Educational Technology Plan 2010. Available online - http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology (2016). Future ready learning: Reimagining the role of technology in education. Washington, DC. Available online - http://tech.ed.gov/netp/