The National Education Technology Plan

The Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, presented the President's National Education Technology Plan in November of 2010.  It focuses on personalized learning for all levels of education.  It calls for tapping into the power of technology to encourage lifelong learning.  The five areas targeted to implement the plan include:  Learning, Assessment, Teaching, Infrastructure and Productivity.

The area of learning identifies what and how we teach.  It suggest evaluating the core concepts and competencies of the material that the students should learn.  It would involve various options for learning, both inside and outside the confines of the classroom.

Assessing the course of learning should involve technology based assessments providing data to determine the course for individual learning.   Once these strengths and weaknesses are assessed, the plan turns its attention to the models of teaching namely a model of connected teaching, teaching from a team approach.  This approach blends the classroom with virtual classroom opportunities.

Having a stable and secured infrastructure that includes personnel, support, professional development, hardware and software that push emerging technoology is the key to remaining relevant and competitive.   The infrastructure must be prepared to handle multimedia to unlock new ways of learning and sharing information.

Education must keep pace with other sectors of society by improving productivity.  We must be prepared to rethink and transform.  Change forces us to grow.  Federal, state and local districts all play an important part as we look to the future growth and transformation of our educational system.

The plan is practical.  It states that in order for this vision to become a reality, action is needed on all levels.  It calls for making this vision our own.